Christie, Agatha

English detective writer, born as Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller in an affluent middle-class home in Torquay in Devon County. Her father, who was an American from New York, died already in 1901, and Agatha was therefore brought up by her English mother while receiving her education in the home. When sixteen, she was sent to Paris to study singing, but it soon turned out that her voice was not sufficiently strong for the intended opera career. Instead she spent the winter together with her mother in Cairo, where she wrote her first novel (never published) and a few short stories. She had earlier already written a few short texts and was encouraged to continue with this by a good friend of the family, the established thriller author Eden Phillpotts.