Article: Books: Murder most cosy Agatha Christie's popularity is a mystery Charles Spencer cannot fathom

The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie:

A Biographical Companion to the Works of Agatha Christie

by Charles Osborne

HarperCollins, pounds 16.99, 421 pp

AT THE very least, Charles Osborne deserves a medal for persistence. He has ploughed through everything Agatha Christie ever wrote, and somehow managed to avoid being incarcerated by the men in white coats. Indeed he still claims to enjoy the so-called Queen of Crime, and in recent years has turned two of her plays into novels.

There has always been something engagingly subversive about Charles Osborne, who has combined a prolific career as an author with a long stint as literature director of the Arts Council and a shorter one as theatre ...

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