Agatha Christie’s Armchair Travel Mysteries

ListsTravel

Sep 14

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By Carol Pouliot

In celebration of Agatha Christie’s birthday on September 15, I’m offering a list of books which speak to one of her most favorite things—foreign travel.

Agatha loved taking off for parts unknown. As a child, her family spent several summers in France. She later attended boarding schools in Paris. She devoted an entire section of her autobiography to a trip around the world. In Part 6, she wrote, “Going round the world was one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me.”

When we see photographs of Agatha, the image is often of when she was elderly. It’s easy to forget she was once young, vibrant, and curious about the world and the people in it. Agatha was bold and adventurous, sometimes traveling alone, always exploring new and exciting places, and things that were foreign to her own way of life. She was thrilled to try surfing in Hawaii. She explored Istanbul with strangers on a tour organized by the famous Cook Travel Agency. She made days-long journeys by train across the desert to reach Baghdad, and she did this fearlessly by herself.

Agatha Christie’s favorite mode of travel was by train, and the famed Venice Simplon Orient Express was her favorite. She used it almost exclusively to travel to the Middle East.

In 1931, a trip on the luxurious train inspired Agatha when bad weather forced it to sit on the tracks, unable to move forward, for 24 hours. Later, in March 1932, when Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s baby was kidnapped and subsequently murdered, Agatha had the final piece of the plot for her novel. Murder on the Orient Express epitomizes the classic locked-room mystery, and stunned readers with its original, and unusual, conclusion.

Agatha enjoyed accompanying her second husband, archeologist Max Mallowan, whom she met on a dig in Ur, on his trips to the Middle East. There Max would excavate and Agatha would write. Murder in Mesopotamia takes place in what is now Iraq and portrays life on a dig. The description of what an archeological site looks like, the people working there and their responsibilities, and the way of life on a dig, is accurate to the smallest detail. Agatha knew all of this because she lived all of it—and loved it.

Raise a glass and settle in to celebrate Agatha’s birthday with one—or more—of her classic travel mysteries.