Arth

1. English-speaking crime writers
Arthur Conan Doyle Agatha Christie

2. A strange picture on the wall in this London underground...

3. And
Sherlock
Holmes
outside
the
station!!!

4. Sherlock Holmes and his colleague,
Doctor Watson.
Conan Doyle was
born in Edinburgh,
Scotland, in 1859.
He became a doctor
and began to work
in England. His
famous hero was
created in 1887, in
his first book: "A
Study in Scarlet".

5. More stories came and were
published in a newspaper from
1891:more and more readers
thought Sherlock Holmes was a
real person!
Sherlock uses methods to
investigate very similar to a
teacher of Conan Doyle at
University in Edinburgh: look in
details at people (or bodies) and
you will find clues to solve the
mystery!

6. The end of Sherlock Holmes...
But Conan Doyle didn't
want to be a "crime story"
writer: he wanted to be a
"serious" writer: in 1893, he
"killed" his hero (with his
enemy, Doctor Moriarty) in a
story. Readers , shocked,
wrote to Conan Doyle to stop
this situation: they wanted
the famous detective to
come back!!!

7. So Conan Doyle was obliged to resuscitate his hero for more stories. He
wrote four books and 56 stories with Sherlock Holmes. The most famous is
probably :"The Hound of the Baskervilles".
Today his success is here, with a museum in London, at the address where
Sherlock Holmes lived (or was he an invented person?).

8. The world's “Queen of mystery”
"Hello, I am Agatha Christie and I
am with all my books. I wrote my
first book in 1920. It was an
immediate best-seller. Its title was:
"The mysterious affair at Styles".
People like crime stories, because it
can be part of people's life I suppose.
I was born in 1890, in England.
My mother gave me my education at
home. When I was 16, I went to
Paris to study."

9. World War I and poisons
"I went to work in a hospital in World War I for the Red Cross. I was
a nurse for two years. There was a lot of work to do! We used medicines
or "drugs" for the patients. But drugs can become poisons and they can
kill you... This time was very interesting for me and I used poisons later
in my books to kill people!"

10. Archeology in Irak
"You can see me and my
husband Max Mallowan (we got
married in 1930) on this picture.
Max and I travelled a lot in Irak,
because Max's job was to look at
clues (= small details) in the
ground and to reconstruct the
local history. Max was an
archeologist. His job and my job
are very similar: you investigate
and look for clues to solve a
mystery and to discover the
truth!"

11. Hercule Poirot
One film was made
in 1978 from Agatha
Christie's book, with
famous actor Peter
Ustinov who played
the world-famous
Belgian detective
Hercules Poirot.
"When I was in Irak with Max, I became very
interested in writing a book with a mystery in a hot
country. I decided to invent a story about people on a
boat on the river Nile, in Egypt, with a murder. Its title
was: "Death on the Nile".

12. Miss Marple
One heroine by Agatha
Christie is Miss Marple. In her
small English village, she
watches all and remarks
every detail: Miss Marple
solves the mysteries because
she is very interested in
listening to and observing
people. Is Miss Marple
Agatha Christie's grand-
mother?

13. The Mousetrap
Did you know Agatha Christie's play "the Mousetrap"
began in 1952 in London and you can see it today? It is a
world record!!!