Fifty years after her death, Agatha Christie remains one of the most popular writers worldwide, as adaptations and new modes of appreciation have made her work a permanent part of literature and culture. This is the first book to closely read a representative range of Agatha Christie's detective novels. Treating Christie's murder mysteries as serious examples of literary art, the book situates her work in the context of the twentieth century and shows how it still resonates today. As Christie's great detectives, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, and Superintendent Battle, solve seemingly impossible puzzles, they also traverse details of setting, character, plot, and motivation which Christie scrupulously maps out in ways that matter to the reader. This book explores those details with attention, care, and discernment. Studying the entire sweep of Christie's long career from the 1920s to the 1970s, from early brain-twisters such as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd to the psychologically infused portraits of modern London in At Bertram's Hotel and Third Girl, this book reveals why Christie remains such a treasured author and opens the ingenious construction of Christie's novels to the admiring reader.