A boxed set of the three books that have been confirmed in a popular vote as the World’s Favourite Agatha Christie novels. In a worldwide poll to mark the Queen of Crime’s 125th birthday on 15 September 2015, three books stood out as clear favourites amongst Christie fans past and present. And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie’s 1939 standalone novel, was voted the World’s Favourite Christie, collecting 21% of more than 15,000 votes cast. The runners up were Murder on the Orient Express with 15% and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – one of Christie’s personal favourites – with nearly 10%.
And Then There Were None was Agatha Christie’s most successful book. With over 100 million copies sold worldwide, it is also the bestselling crime novel of all time. Called ‘Agatha Christie’s masterpiece’ (Spectator) and the ‘most baffling mystery Agatha Christie has ever written’ (New York Times), it was famously difficult to write. Christie said she liked it for its ‘difficult technique which was a challenge’. In And Then There Were None, ten strangers are invited to Soldier Island, an isolated rock near the Devon coast. Cut off from the mainland, with their generous hosts Mr and Mrs U.N. Owen mysteriously absent, they are each accused of a terrible crime. When one of the party dies suddenly they realise they may be harbouring a murderer among their number. The other two books see the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot facing two of his most challenging cases: In Murder on the Orient Express, an American millionaire dies of multiple stab wounds on a snowbound train bound for Paris, and in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, a wealthy widower is stabbed to death in his study, the sensational book that made Agatha Christie a household name.
