Masterpieces in Miniature: The Detectives »

Agatha Christie is nearly synonymous with upper-class British mysteries, for good reason. She set the standard for the genre in over 60 novels and dozens of short stories, also creating two classic detectives: the fastidious Belgian, Hercule Poirot, and English spinster Jane Marple. No one could match Christie's knack for weaving clues into her stories, then turning the whole thing inside out -- shocking her readers every time.

Agatha Christie is the world's most popular modern writer, her works having been outsold only by those of Shakespeare and the Bible. Though best remembered fro such classic novels as Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, and Death on the Nile, Christie was also a master of the shorter crime story, and this volume collects some of her finest short pieces in the largest compendium of her work ever. Each of these stories features one of Christie's famous detectives:

• Parker Pyne - a consulting detective whose practice is to bring or restore happiness to his clients
• Harley Quin - a tall, dark, mysterious young man with seemingly magical powers
• Hercule Poirot - the moustachioed Belgian private detective famous for his incomparable "little gray cells"
• Miss Jane Marple - tall, thin, and elderly, she is the premier crime-solver in the village of St. Mary's Mead

These thirty-nine stories are some of these detectives' most baffling and intriguing cases. All of these ingenious Christie tales show ho satisfying and compelling the short crime story can be in the hands of a master.

Publishers Weekly

Masterpieces in Miniature: The Detectives is the largest collection ever of Agatha Christie stories. The 39 selections each feature one of four celebrated Christie detectives-Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Parker Pyne or Harley Quin. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.