History Creator / AgathaChristie

* EverybodyDidIt: She wrote the Trope Maker for ''this'' one too. [[spoiler:In ''Murder on the Orient Express'', the passengers have all deliberately conspired to act as a de facto jury and execute a man who evaded justice in the States. They all knew the victim's family and are only pretending to be strangers in order to deliberately obfuscate the means by which the man was killed and corroborate each others' false alibis.]]

* DirtyCop: Generally averted. In Christie's verse, police are almost always honest and diligent, if often [[PoliceAreUseless inefficient and prejudiced]]. And that concerns police everywhere, not only in Good Old England: in one of the short stories Poirot scoffs at an Englishman who thought he could bribe Czechoslovakian police to conceal a murder. If some cop turns out to have been dishonest, chances are he is not a real cop to begin with. [[spoiler: Or that you're reading ''Literature/HerculePoirotsChristmas'', though even there "dirty" is probably not the right word. Blore from ''Literature/AndThenThereWereNone'']] might be the sole example in Christie's lore where this trope was played completely straight.

* SympatheticMurderer: Christie's plots often work on a sliding scale: if a character is an AssholeVictim, expect the murderer to be treated well; if the victim was TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth, then the murderer would be a CompleteMonster. The most extreme example is probably ''Murder on the Orient Express'', where the villain is a man who kidnapped and murdered a child, causing a disastrous chain effect that killed at least two other people, and the murderer [[spoiler: or rather ''murderers'' are twelve people directly affected by those deaths, prompting them to seek revenge.]] Even Poirot, who normally holds murderers in contempt regardless of their justifications, [[EveryoneHasStandards decides to let this killer go free]], coming up with another solution to satisfy the authorities.

* AdjectiveAnimalAlehouse: The titular Pale Horse in ''The Pale Horse''.

* CompleteTheQuoteTitle: ''The Pale Horse'' has a DoubleMeaningTitle. Most obviously, "The Pale Horse" is the name of an old inn that is central to the plot. But, also, it is an allusion to the Literature/BookOfRevelation: "I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death." [[spoiler: In the book, three old women claim to be able to kill people using magic, and they have the body count to back up their claim.]]

* DispenseWithThePleasantries: Inverted in ''The Pale Horse'' where [[AmoralAttorney Mr. Bradley]] is shocked at Mark Easterbrook dispensing with the pleasantries.

* SympatheticMurderer: Christie's plots often work on a sliding scale: if a character is an AssholeVictim, expect the murderer to be treated well; if the victim was TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth, then the murderer would be a CompleteMonster. The most extreme example is probably ''Murder on the Orient Express'', where the villain is a man who kidnapped and murdered a child, causing a disastrous chain effect that killed at least two other people, and the murderer [[spoiler: or rather ''murderers'' are twelve people directly affected by those deaths, prompting them to seek revenge.]] Even Poirot, who normally holds murderers in contempt regardless of their justifications, [[EveryoneHasStandards decides to let this killer go free]], coming up with another solution to satsify the authorities.

%%* SympatheticMurderer

%%* DrivenToSuicide: Multiple variations. See the trope page for a list.

** Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent from ''The Secret of Chimneys'' and ''The Seven Dials Mystery'' is an absolute road hog. People had learned to clear out of the road while she is on it, and her father refuses to go anywhere with her for fear of developing heart attack. He was not surprised when she came home one day saying that she had ran over someone, and was more inclined to disbelief when he later find out that she ''didn't''.

* Literature/TommyAndTuppence series (1922)
** ''Literature/TheSecretAdversary'' (1922)
* ''Literature/TheManInTheBrownSuit'' (1924)
* ''Literature/TheSecretOfChimneys'' (1925)
* ''Literature/TheMysteriousMrQuin'' (1930)

* DoggedNiceGuy: Bill Eversleigh from ''The Secret of the Chimneys'' is a sweet, eager-to-please young man who is hopelessly in love with Virginia Revel, and proposes to her at every opportunity. Virginia thinks of him as nothing but a friend, and laughs off his proposals. She marries the dashing Anthony Cade by the end of the book. However, Bill finally averts this fate in the sequel, ''The Seven Dials Mystery'', when he falls in love with Bundle Brent, and she chooses him over her other suitor, George Lomax.

* KingIncognito: ''The Secret of the Chimneys'', which heavily features a European monarchy provides numerous examples of this.
** The murder victim, Prince Michael Obolovitch, heir of the Herzoslovakian throne, had previously masqueraded as a less important noble by the name of Count Stanislaus. He had also appeared as [[spoiler:Mr Holmes from Balderson and Hodgkins to steal [[MacGuffin an important manuscript]] from Anthony Cade]].
** One of the murderers is in fact the former Queen of Herzoslovakia, who had faked her death during the revolution, and lived as [[spoiler:Miss Brun, governess to Bundle Brent's younger sisters]] while biding for her time to strike back.
** There's also Prince Nicholas, Michael's missing cousin who is rumoured to have died before the events of the stories. In the book's climax, he reveals that he had spread rumours of his own death in order to relinquish his royal duties so that he could live a normal life as [[spoiler:Anthony Cade, adventurer]].

** ''Literature/PoirotInvestigates'' (1924)(short story collection)

* HeroicRussianEmigre: Agatha had quite conservative political views, typical for her epoch: she disliked Bolshevism and tended to portray post-1917 Russian émigrés in a generally sympathetic light, though also recognizing that the chaotic situation often gave life to spurious claims to non-existent nobility status by various impersonators. Examples of the émigrés include "Countess" Vera Rossakoff, Literature/HerculePoirot's only acknowledged love interest, and Princess Natalia Dragomiroff from ''Literature/MurderOnTheOrientExpress'' [[spoiler:who was a {{Vigilante}} seeking to avenge [[WouldHurtAChild the murder of a child]], and was acquitted by Poirot.]]

%%* CluelessMystery: How the clues go together is often made impossible for the reader to divine until the detective states it.

** AuthorAvatar Ariadne Oliver's most popular character, Sven Hjerson, is a thinly-disguised expy of Poirot. He's lanky and Finnish rather than plump and Belgian, and [[PickyEater a vegetarian who grates his vegetables]] rather than being a NeatFreak, but her creator's in-universe complaints mirror Christie's growing dislike of Poirot in real life.

** Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent from ''The Secret of Chimneys'' and ''The Seven Dials Mystery'' is an absolute road hog. People had learned to clear out of the road while she's on it, and her father refuses to go anywhere with her for fear of developing heart attack. He was not surprised when she came home one day saying that she had ran over someone, and was more inclined to disbelief when he later find out that she ''didn't''.
** The play ''The Unexpected Guest'' also includes this with the titular guest trying to shift blame in the murder of Richard Warwick to the father of a little boy that Warwick ran over two years before. It's never truly revealed how it happened, only that Warwick is completely unrepentant about the matter, his caretaker did a damn good job keeping him out of jail over it, and that the father was found to be dead not long after the event.

* DrivesLikeCrazy: Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent from ''The Secret of Chimneys'' and ''The Seven Dials Mystery'' is an absolute road hog. People had learned to clear out of the road while she's on it, and her father refuses to go anywhere with her for fear of developing heart attack. He was not surprised when she came home one day saying that she had ran over someone, and was more inclined to disbelief when he later find out that she ''didn't''.

* ThemeNaming: Christie was fond of titling her works after nursery rhymes. Novel examples include ''Literature/AndThenThereWereNone'' (and both its [[MarketBasedTitle previous titles]]); ''One, Two, Buckle My Shoe''; ''Literature/FiveLittlePigs''; ''Crooked House''; ''Hickory Dickory Dock''; and ''A Pocket Full of Rye''. Short stories include "Sing a Song of Sixpence", "Four and Twenty Blackbirds", "How Does Your Garden Grow", and "Three Blind Mice". Note that each of the first three lines of "Sing a Song of Sixpence" has provided the title of a work.
** And the novel ''Postern of Fate'' and the short story "The Gate of Baghdad", both of which titles came from the first quarter of the poem ''Gates of Damascus'' by James Elroy Flecker.