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A mysterious affair of style. (Agatha Christie's centenary)

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From: The Economist (US)
Date: 19900929
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THE Bible and Shakespeare have had the churches and the schools working for them; but the third-biggest seller, Agatha Christie, achieved her rank entirely through the workings of the market. Even her successes in communist-ruled countries have owed everything to public demand, nothing to the kind of official favour bestowed there on some of the works of, say, Dickens or Twain. Her books, as utterly English as they are utterly bourgeois, have sold as well in America as in Britain and have been translated into more than 100 languages. Worldwide sales passed the 2 billion mark before ...

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