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Christie was 30 when in February 1920 "The
Mysterious Affair at Styles" was serialised in a British
newspaper. The book was published in America in October and the
following year in Britain.
Now, according to Guinness World Records, Christie is the
world's best-selling fiction writer and her crime novels have
sold 2 billion copies.
"She did that as a woman at the time when women did not really
do that kind of thing. And I think that is extraordinary and
worthy of ... jumping up and down about," her great grandson
James Prichard told Reuters in a Zoom interview.
Prichard said he thought Christie, who died in 1976, didn't
expect to earn a living as a writer and it was just a bit of fun
to start with.
That changed when a bet with her sister led to her writing "The
Mysterious Affair at Styles".
"The story is that it sort of came out of a bet with her sister,
who bet her that she couldn't write a book and have it
published. I think she won the bet," Prichard said.
Famous for characters such as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot
and amateur sleuth Miss Marple, Christie's success is down to
the "ingenious plots" that she mapped out in her head, Prichard
said.
Christie also wrote 19 plays, of which the most famous, "The
Mousetrap", opened in 1952. It broke for the first time in March
due to the pandemic.
There have been numerous radio, TV and film adaptations of her
work, many now on streaming service Britbox.
"Our goal is to get all of her written works in all the adapted
forms that we can get," said Britbox president and CEO Soumya
Sriraman.
Kenneth Branagh's "Death on the Nile" is due out in December.
It's the second Christie movie from the director after "Murder
on the Orient Express" in 2017.
(Editing by Giles Elgood)
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