Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller( Agatha Christie) was born on September 15, 1890, in Torquay, Devon, in the southwest part of England. In 1914, she wed Colonel Archibald Christie, a Royal Flying Corp pilot, and took up nursing during World War I. She published her first book ,The Mysterious Affairs at Styles, in 1920 . Known for her sixty- six detective novels and fourteen short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detective Hercule Poirot and miss Marple She also wrote the world's longest- running play, The Mousetrap, which was performed in the west end from 1952 to 2020, as well as six novels under the pseudonym Mary westmacott. In 1971, She was made a Dame (DBE) for her contributions to literature. Guinness world records lists Christie as the best- selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
“Five Little Pig's” is my first Agatha Christie novel. Crime novels and thrillers have always been one of my favorite genre. I’ve heard my mother and few others say Agatha Christie is the queen of crime novels and her way of writing is incomparable. As usual I started reading with my preconceived notions . What more can a crime novel offer ?, besides being a crime thriller I didn't realized it had certain delightful surprises.
I never thought any thriller book can surpass the experience of the Sherlock Holmes series. This book proved me wrong. Like any other crime story it was filled with suspense, excitement, and adventure, but what made this book special was the way it explored , analyzed and presented the raw human psyche. I have always been fascinated with the diversity , contradictions and dubiousness of human nature. To tell you a bit about the story without giving out a spoiler , a murder is committed and there are five suspects. As the protagonist attempts to identify the killer through the narrative of five suspects, the novel unravels the various shade of human psyche. Initially I found it boring and exhausting to read five repetitive narrations of the same incident. As I persisted with the plot, I began to observe a whole different layer to the book. A layer which dealt with diverse human emotions. The emotions painted in the story overwhelmed me completely. As the narrative unfolded, I was consumed by jealousy, anger, guilt, hatred, and pain just like the characters felt. It also got me pondering about justice. About what constituted right and wrong. It has always been a dilemma to me, whether life and life experiences can be simply divided and understood as right or wrong? Black or white? Good or bad? Yes or no?. Most of the time I have realized that the answers lie in between these extremes or dualities. For me, after a point, the philosophical dilemma became more fascinating than the story line or the actual crime itself.
I think i will read more of her works and hope that they will continue to captivate and educate me.
