This Edgar-Award winning biography of Agatha Christie is not the kind you read because it's a great biography written with insight and style that transcends its subject--but because you find the subject written about interesting. (And know of no better on the subject.) This book was picked up at a rummage sale by my aunt. We've long been Agatha Christie fans in my family--my mother loved her stories and I can't remember the first time I read one of her books--I was so young. She wrote 94 books, 83 of them mysteries. I've read somewhat over a dozen of the most famous including such favorites of mine as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, And Then There Were None and Death Comes as the End--and intend to read more.

This biography was published only two years after Christie's death in 1976. Although it's evidently well-researched, it felt to me rushed in its assembly--it has the feel of an extended newspaper article, full of quotes from people who knew her, some only very slightly, a bit pedestrian and dry. Some of the minutia of her finances and charitable contributions and the production of her plays bored me. Moreover, I came into the book with questions I felt were never answered and wishing the book had given me more insight into her writing--and the woman herself.

For one, even as a young girl who was much less aware of these things, the ethnic stereotyping in some of Christie's novels could make me cringe. I also took her as Anti-American given depictions in her novels, so I was surprised to find out her father was American. I had read that Christopher Hitchens claimed that on a visit with Christie and her husband, the anti-Jewish comments from them both were "vividly unpleasant" and could not just be "put down to generational prejudice." And I had been shocked to find out years ago that the original and British title of And Then There Were None was Ten Little Niggers, and that in British editions it took place on "Nigger Island" (changed to "Indian Island" in American editions so I never encountered that.) Robyns rather blandly passes over this by mentioning the change of title in the United States as due to sensitivity given the racial discrimination there, as if the term was not equally offensive across the pond. (And the English unlike Americans free of race prejudice.) I found that way too glib. Now, I know the title was based on a Nursery Rhyme of that name that was the basis of the story. Still, I'd have liked a portrait of Christie that went beyond that of just a sweet little old lady. Even if Robyns does admit to a more turbulent time in Christie's life, when discussing her disappearance in 1926--basically done Robyns concluded to take revenge on her unfaithful first husband. And although the book does touch on some critics of Christie's writing, there was no mention of two of the most famous critiques: Edmund Wilson ("Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" - 1945) and Raymond Chandler ("The Simple Art of Murder" - 1950). Maybe because they were Americans?

Robyns does give us a look at Christie's privileged childhood. Maybe not quite to the manor born, and she's often described in the book as "middle class" but it's a middle most Americans would consider fabulously wealthy: a father who frequented clubs, a Nanny, a cook and maids, a Paris finishing school when she was a teenager. Robyns even relates how Christie once wrote in her autobiography that what she would have missed most had she been a child of today was servants--that they added color and drama to everyday life. So all those mysteries set in stately English country homes where cucumber sandwiches were served and Earl Grey poured out of silver teapots? Christie came by it honestly. And Robyns explains why the villain in Christie's books was never the vicar and almost never a member of professions such as lawyers or doctors. "It simply was not done to denigrate one's own class."

There are other little insights into her writing and writing process you can glean from the book I did find interesting. For instance--and this is common among many successful writers--her own insecurity about her writing, her belief while in the midst of writing she was no good. And really, given how shortly this was written after Christie's death, I probably shouldn't complain I didn't feel this gave enough perspective. Robyns herself described Christie as a "fanatically private woman" so we should be graceful for as many clues as she gave us into the mystery of Agatha Christie. ( )