The Crime of the Century

The mystery of Agatha Christie’s enduring popularity is rooted in a nostalgia for the certainties of the Victorian class system.

Illustration by Daniel Zender

The ongoing popularity of Agatha Christie is a bit staggering. In 2017, Amazon and the BBC cut a multiyear deal to adapt lavish versions of Christie mysteries for television — books that have been adapted many, many times before. Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express, featuring Branagh himself as the famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, […]

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