I love her fussy little brainbox with a thirst for truth...and a romantic side

I came to read Agatha Christie in my

20s, post-university, my reading matter changing from literary fiction to something I saw as lighter fare.

Finding her was a blessing as the characters became familiar friends, the more genteel way of life depicted in her pages charming and quirky and, above all, the puzzle presented to the reader a stimulating challenge. None more so than the novel I consider her finest, The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd.

Viewpoint has always fascinated me, trying to enter another person’s mind and see the world from his or her perspective and it was a refreshing change to read a Christie novel written in the first person – from Doctor Sheppard’s point of view. Not just refreshing, as it turned out, but quite mind-blowing and, for its time, wildly innovative since Sheppard is...well, I’d better not say any more.

It was the third outing for her little Belgian genius and I still wonder if Christie intended to continue with Hercule Poirot for as many books as she eventually did, this one seeing the detective retreat to a small village in search of the peace and quiet of retirement. Characters, however, have a habit of developing their own ideas about their place in a book, as I well know, and Poirot was to become a character of worldwide fame. Here we see him venturing into the quiet life of a man who grows vegetables, having turned his back on a lifetime of solving crime, his sidekick Captain Hastings off to Africa. He befriends Sheppard, seems to like the doctor but all the while, as the plot becomes more and more complex, those little grey cells are working.

The various strands gave Christie the chance to show Poirot as a fully rounded character, his sympathy for young lovers bringing out his romantic side, his insatiable thirst for truth elevating him to heroic status yet always maintaining these fussy traits that made him totally human.

I remember the day I read that Agatha Christie had died and my feeling of intense and selfish sorrow. She gave me so much more than a canon of fiction, however, bringing me to realise eventually that hers was the genre I would wish to follow. Thank you, Agatha, for Poirot and all the rest of your wonderful characters.