A Christie Mystery Trivia Quiz

Answer:

The Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, is one of Agatha Christie's most memorable characters. Though she later tired of using him in her books, his popularity among readers meant that she was still forced to write storylines that included this character. Poirot featured in some of the books used in this quiz, but not all.

Here's a brief summary of the plot lines of all the novels in the quiz:

The plot of the "Crooked House" revolves around the murder of a family patriarch. Three generations of the family lived together and many of the family members seemed to have a motive to want the old man dead.

In "Mrs. McGinty's Dead", Poirot and Ariadne Oliver work together to solve the murder mystery, although the setting of a small village is more reminiscent of the Miss Marple stories.

"The Body in the Library" has Miss Marple working to solve the murders of two teenaged girls.

In "Evil Under the Sun", Poirot is on holiday in Devon when one of the guests at the same hotel is murdered.

"The Clocks" is another Poirot novel. What's interesting here is that Poirot is tasked with solving the crime only using his 'little grey cells'. He doesn't visit the crime scene or speak with any of the people involved.

"The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side" is a Miss Marple mystery set in her village of St Mary Mead. An American actress come to live in the village and Miss Marple is soon neck-deep solving another murder.

"Endless Night" is written in the first person with a young Michael Rogers narrating the story of how he met and fell in love with his now deceased wife. Despite not featuring any of her popular recurring characters, the novel received both critical acclaim and strong sales.

"Sparkling Cyanide" was based on an earlier short story called "Yellow Iris". While the latter featured Poirot, in "Sparkling Cyanide" Christie uses another recurring character, Colonel Race, instead. Published in the US under the title "Remembered Death", the plot follows the deaths of a couple, with the husband dying exactly one year after the wife.

"Cards on the Table" is an interesting novel featuring four of Christie's recurring sleuths - Hercule Poirot, Colonel Race, Ariadne Oliver, and Superintendent Battle. The four detectives are invited to dinner and a game of bridge with four other guests by Mr. Shaitana. By the end of the evening, their host is found murdered.

"The Man in the Brown Suit" is one of Christie's less popular works. The novel starts in London but soon moves to Africa, first Cape Town, South Africa, and then a fictional island in the Zambezi River. This is the first novel featuring Colonel Race.

While it is not a sequel in the general sense of the word, "Nemesis" follows "A Caribbean Mystery" in that Jason Rafiel who Miss Marple encounters in the latter novel is the catalyst for this book. Now deceased, Rafiel had left a letter with his solicitors requesting Miss Marple's help in solving a crime with a promised reward of 20,000 pounds.

"Murder is Easy" was also published under the alternate title, "Easy to Kill". A retired police officer is surprised to find that a small, quiet village called Wychwood under Ashe appears to have had a series of mysterious or accidental deaths in the last few years.