Agatha Christie Quiz
Poirot, Marple, the Orient Express and an 11 day vanishing act: 15 questions on the Queen of Crime.
What nationality is Christie's moustachioed detective Hercule Poirot?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Belgian
Poirot is a retired Belgian police officer who arrived in England as a refugee during the First World War. Christie modelled him partly on the Belgian refugees she saw in Torquay, and he bristles whenever anyone calls him French.
Christie grew so weary of Poirot that she privately called him a detestable, bombastic little creep, yet she kept writing him for over fifty years.
Which Christie sleuth lives in the village of St Mary Mead?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Miss Marple
Jane Marple, an elderly spinster with a sharp eye for human nature, solves her cases from the fictional village of St Mary Mead by comparing suspects to people she has known. She first appeared in short stories in 1927.
Christie said Miss Marple was inspired partly by her own grandmother, who always expected the worst of everyone and was usually proved right.
Which Christie play, which opened in London in 1952, holds the record as the longest running play in the world?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
The Mousetrap
The Mousetrap opened at the Ambassadors Theatre on 25 November 1952 and has run continuously in the West End ever since, apart from the pandemic closure. Audiences are asked at every performance not to reveal the ending.
Christie gave the play's royalties to her grandson Mathew Prichard as a ninth birthday present, never expecting it to run more than a few months.
Which actor played Poirot in the ITV series that ran from 1989 to 2013?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
David Suchet
David Suchet played Poirot in 70 episodes over 24 years, adapting every Poirot novel and nearly every short story. He compiled a 93 point dossier of the detective's habits to stay faithful to the books.
Suchet's final episode, Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, aired in November 2013, and he said the mincing walk came from a sixpence held between his buttocks.
How many guests are lured to an isolated island in And Then There Were None?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Ten
Ten strangers, each with a hidden guilty secret, are invited to an island off the Devon coast and killed one by one in the manner of a nursery rhyme. With more than 100 million copies sold, it is Christie's best-selling novel.
The island was inspired by Burgh Island off south Devon, which Christie visited and later used again in Evil Under the Sun.
Who narrates many of the early Poirot stories as the detective's loyal but slightly dim companion?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Captain Hastings
Captain Arthur Hastings, a wounded officer home from the Western Front, meets Poirot in The Mysterious Affair at Styles and narrates eight novels. Christie modelled the pairing openly on Holmes and Watson.
Hastings has a weakness for auburn haired women and is forever leaping to the wrong conclusion, which lets Poirot explain his reasoning to the reader.
In which Yorkshire spa town was Christie found after her mysterious eleven day disappearance in December 1926?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Harrogate
Christie vanished on 3 December 1926 after her husband asked for a divorce, prompting a national manhunt. She was found on 14 December living quietly at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate under the name Mrs Teresa Neele, her husband's mistress's surname.
Christie never publicly explained the episode and left it out of her autobiography, so theories range from amnesia to a carefully planned humiliation of her husband.
Which 1926 Christie novel caused outrage with a twist involving its narrator, Dr James Sheppard?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd made Christie famous because the narrator himself turns out to be the murderer, a trick some critics at the time denounced as cheating. It is now routinely named among the best crime novels ever written.
Christie credited the idea partly to her brother-in-law James Watts and partly to a suggestion from Lord Mountbatten, who wrote to her proposing a narrator killer.
Which novel introduced Hercule Poirot in 1920?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Christie wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles during the First World War after her sister bet she could not write a detective story. Set in a country house in Essex, it was rejected by several publishers before appearing in 1920.
Christie's wartime work in a hospital dispensary gave her a working knowledge of poisons, and strychnine does the killing in that first novel.
In Murder on the Orient Express, how many stab wounds does Poirot find on the body of Ratchett?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Twelve
Ratchett is stabbed twelve times, with wounds that vary wildly in depth and angle, which leads Poirot to realise that twelve different people, acting as a self-appointed jury, each struck a blow.
Christie drew on the real Lindbergh baby kidnapping of 1932 for the Armstrong case that drives the killers' revenge.
Under what pen name did Christie publish six non-crime novels including Absent in the Spring?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Mary Westmacott
Christie published six novels as Mary Westmacott between 1930 and 1956, exploring love and family life rather than murder. She kept the identity secret for nearly twenty years until a newspaper exposed it in 1949.
She wrote Absent in the Spring in just three days and called it the one book that had completely satisfied her.
Christie's second husband Max Mallowan, whom she married in 1930, worked in which profession?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Archaeologist
Max Mallowan was an archaeologist fourteen years her junior whom Christie met on a dig at Ur in Iraq. She joined him on excavations in Syria and Iraq for decades, cleaning finds and photographing the sites.
Those seasons in the Middle East gave her the settings for Murder in Mesopotamia, Death on the Nile and Appointment with Death.
Who directed and starred as Poirot in the 2017 film version of Murder on the Orient Express?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh directed and played Poirot, complete with an enormous grey moustache, in the 2017 film, which earned over 350 million dollars worldwide. He followed it with Death on the Nile and A Haunting in Venice.
Albert Finney played Poirot in the 1974 film of the same book and earned an Oscar nomination for it, the only Poirot performance to do so.
Which married couple solve mysteries together in The Secret Adversary and N or M?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Tommy and Tuppence
Tommy and Tuppence Beresford debuted in Christie's second novel, The Secret Adversary, in 1922 as bright young things turned adventurers. Unlike Poirot and Marple they aged in real time across five books.
Their final outing, Postern of Fate in 1973, was the last novel Christie wrote, although two earlier manuscripts were published after it.
What is the title of the final Poirot novel, written during the Second World War but kept in a bank vault until 1975?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Curtain
Christie wrote Curtain in the early 1940s as insurance in case she was killed in the Blitz, then locked it away for over thirty years. Published in 1975, it returns Poirot to Styles for his last case and ends with his death.
Poirot became the only fictional character ever given a front page obituary in The New York Times, headlined Hercule Poirot Is Dead.
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All Literature quizzes →About the Agatha Christie Quiz
Agatha Christie is outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare, with an estimated two billion copies in print. She wrote 66 detective novels, created two of the most famous sleuths in fiction and in 1926 staged a disappearance so puzzling that a thousand police officers and Arthur Conan Doyle himself joined the search.
These 15 questions open with Poirot, Miss Marple and The Mousetrap, then work through the famous twists of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Murder on the Orient Express, her pen name, her archaeologist husband and the final Poirot novel she locked in a bank vault. It suits anyone who has read a few Christies or watched David Suchet on a Sunday night.
You will find 15 multiple choice questions here, each with four options. Difficulty: Hard. Most people finish in about 6 minutes, and every answer comes with a short explanation and one extra fact worth keeping.
How to play
Read the question and pick one of the four answers. The correct answer is revealed straight away with a short explanation, then press Next question to keep going. At the end you get your score out of 15 and a full review of your round. Play again any time and the questions arrive in a fresh order. There is no timer and no account.
Good to know before you play
Which Agatha Christie book should I read first?
And Then There Were None is her best-selling standalone and a perfect entry point, while The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Murder on the Orient Express are the classic Poirot starting places.
Does this quiz spoil any Christie endings?
It mentions the famous twist in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and the solution to Murder on the Orient Express, both of which are nearly a century old and widely known, but no other endings are revealed.
How many books did Agatha Christie write?
She published 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections under her own name, six novels as Mary Westmacott, and the play The Mousetrap, which has run in London since 1952.
Answer key: all 15 questions with explanations
- What nationality is Christie's moustachioed detective Hercule Poirot?
Belgian Poirot is a retired Belgian police officer who arrived in England as a refugee during the First World War. Christie modelled him partly on the Belgian refugees she saw in Torquay, and he bristles whenever anyone calls him French. Christie grew so weary of Poirot that she privately called him a detestable, bombastic little creep, yet she kept writing him for over fifty years. - Which Christie sleuth lives in the village of St Mary Mead?
Miss Marple Jane Marple, an elderly spinster with a sharp eye for human nature, solves her cases from the fictional village of St Mary Mead by comparing suspects to people she has known. She first appeared in short stories in 1927. Christie said Miss Marple was inspired partly by her own grandmother, who always expected the worst of everyone and was usually proved right. - Which Christie play, which opened in London in 1952, holds the record as the longest running play in the world?
The Mousetrap The Mousetrap opened at the Ambassadors Theatre on 25 November 1952 and has run continuously in the West End ever since, apart from the pandemic closure. Audiences are asked at every performance not to reveal the ending. Christie gave the play's royalties to her grandson Mathew Prichard as a ninth birthday present, never expecting it to run more than a few months. - Which actor played Poirot in the ITV series that ran from 1989 to 2013?
David Suchet David Suchet played Poirot in 70 episodes over 24 years, adapting every Poirot novel and nearly every short story. He compiled a 93 point dossier of the detective's habits to stay faithful to the books. Suchet's final episode, Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, aired in November 2013, and he said the mincing walk came from a sixpence held between his buttocks. - How many guests are lured to an isolated island in And Then There Were None?
Ten Ten strangers, each with a hidden guilty secret, are invited to an island off the Devon coast and killed one by one in the manner of a nursery rhyme. With more than 100 million copies sold, it is Christie's best-selling novel. The island was inspired by Burgh Island off south Devon, which Christie visited and later used again in Evil Under the Sun. - Who narrates many of the early Poirot stories as the detective's loyal but slightly dim companion?
Captain Hastings Captain Arthur Hastings, a wounded officer home from the Western Front, meets Poirot in The Mysterious Affair at Styles and narrates eight novels. Christie modelled the pairing openly on Holmes and Watson. Hastings has a weakness for auburn haired women and is forever leaping to the wrong conclusion, which lets Poirot explain his reasoning to the reader. - In which Yorkshire spa town was Christie found after her mysterious eleven day disappearance in December 1926?
Harrogate Christie vanished on 3 December 1926 after her husband asked for a divorce, prompting a national manhunt. She was found on 14 December living quietly at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate under the name Mrs Teresa Neele, her husband's mistress's surname. Christie never publicly explained the episode and left it out of her autobiography, so theories range from amnesia to a carefully planned humiliation of her husband. - Which 1926 Christie novel caused outrage with a twist involving its narrator, Dr James Sheppard?
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd The Murder of Roger Ackroyd made Christie famous because the narrator himself turns out to be the murderer, a trick some critics at the time denounced as cheating. It is now routinely named among the best crime novels ever written. Christie credited the idea partly to her brother-in-law James Watts and partly to a suggestion from Lord Mountbatten, who wrote to her proposing a narrator killer. - Which novel introduced Hercule Poirot in 1920?
The Mysterious Affair at Styles Christie wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles during the First World War after her sister bet she could not write a detective story. Set in a country house in Essex, it was rejected by several publishers before appearing in 1920. Christie's wartime work in a hospital dispensary gave her a working knowledge of poisons, and strychnine does the killing in that first novel. - In Murder on the Orient Express, how many stab wounds does Poirot find on the body of Ratchett?
Twelve Ratchett is stabbed twelve times, with wounds that vary wildly in depth and angle, which leads Poirot to realise that twelve different people, acting as a self-appointed jury, each struck a blow. Christie drew on the real Lindbergh baby kidnapping of 1932 for the Armstrong case that drives the killers' revenge. - Under what pen name did Christie publish six non-crime novels including Absent in the Spring?
Mary Westmacott Christie published six novels as Mary Westmacott between 1930 and 1956, exploring love and family life rather than murder. She kept the identity secret for nearly twenty years until a newspaper exposed it in 1949. She wrote Absent in the Spring in just three days and called it the one book that had completely satisfied her. - Christie's second husband Max Mallowan, whom she married in 1930, worked in which profession?
Archaeologist Max Mallowan was an archaeologist fourteen years her junior whom Christie met on a dig at Ur in Iraq. She joined him on excavations in Syria and Iraq for decades, cleaning finds and photographing the sites. Those seasons in the Middle East gave her the settings for Murder in Mesopotamia, Death on the Nile and Appointment with Death. - Who directed and starred as Poirot in the 2017 film version of Murder on the Orient Express?
Kenneth Branagh Kenneth Branagh directed and played Poirot, complete with an enormous grey moustache, in the 2017 film, which earned over 350 million dollars worldwide. He followed it with Death on the Nile and A Haunting in Venice. Albert Finney played Poirot in the 1974 film of the same book and earned an Oscar nomination for it, the only Poirot performance to do so. - Which married couple solve mysteries together in The Secret Adversary and N or M?
Tommy and Tuppence Tommy and Tuppence Beresford debuted in Christie's second novel, The Secret Adversary, in 1922 as bright young things turned adventurers. Unlike Poirot and Marple they aged in real time across five books. Their final outing, Postern of Fate in 1973, was the last novel Christie wrote, although two earlier manuscripts were published after it. - What is the title of the final Poirot novel, written during the Second World War but kept in a bank vault until 1975?
Curtain Christie wrote Curtain in the early 1940s as insurance in case she was killed in the Blitz, then locked it away for over thirty years. Published in 1975, it returns Poirot to Styles for his last case and ends with his death. Poirot became the only fictional character ever given a front page obituary in The New York Times, headlined Hercule Poirot Is Dead.
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