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Agatha Christie, 50 Years Later: Her 1926 Disappearance and Crime-Fiction Legacy Reconsidered

Retrospectives pair new details of her vanishing with a renewed focus on the cozy-crime tradition she helped define.

Overview

  • On December 3, 1926, after an argument with Archie Christie, she drove off and her car was later found abandoned at Newlands Corner in Surrey.
  • A vast search involving thousands of police, volunteers, dogs and aircraft ended on December 14 when she was located at Harrogate’s Swan Hydropathic Hotel registered as Teresa Neele.
  • The mystery spurred theories ranging from suicide to publicity stunt and drew extraordinary responses, including Scotland Yard searches and Arthur Conan Doyle consulting a medium.
  • Christie largely refused to discuss the episode thereafter, aside from a 1928 Daily Mail interview and brief lines in her posthumous autobiography.
  • New pieces marking 50 years since her death spotlight her whodunit legacy and the cozy-crime boom, alongside 2023 reporting that she shopped and took tea in London after the marital dispute.