Though Agatha Christie died in 1976, her books remain popular and have been made into movies, plays, radio shows, and television series’ and miniseries’, and into popular video games. But only recently have researchers and scientists been able to determine through computer enabled analysis a code in her works – the Agatha Christie Code. This code can be found in both her early books and those she wrote later. She wrote 82 books including her autobiography.

Plot Devices

Agatha Christie used the same plot device that many other mystery authors used and continue to use today. Though some readers, writers, and reviewers may consider some or all of these devices clichéd, Christie’s readers don’t seem to mind at all. The following is a list of plot devices that Christie used to manipulate her readers and keep their attention.

• Red Herrings and other Assorted Clues – While Christie did offer up serious clues for the reader to use when guessing whodunit, she also used Red Herrings in the same way as did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to mislead the reader into assuming facts that were not in evidence.
• The Suspect Least Likely to be suspected
• Murderers in Disguise
• Mastermind Detectives with Intuitive Abilities
• The Locked Room – Many credit Edgar Allan Poe with one of the first “locked room” mysteries, The Murders in the Rue Morgue. In that story a murder victim is found dead in a locked room. Also known as “closed community”, the characters are placed in an isolated area, such as an island or a mansion in winter, with the murderer amongst them.
• The Agatha Christie Code

In a documentary released in 2005, a group of scientists and researchers, from several universities in England, set out to find out the keys to Christie’s success. What they found was that Christie’s method of writing was not necessarily unique, but clearly accessible to her readers. The secrets to her success were both simple and straightforward. These are some of the secrets the code brought to light.

• Descriptions are used mostly at the beginning of the books, with dialogue and action comprising most of the latter half of her novels. This leads the reader to hurry to the end of the book and the final conclusion.
• She used familiar, common phrases.
• Christie employed a very limited, simple vocabulary when writing her novels.
• Continual use of repetition, at least three times, of the same word or words with similar meanings on many pages.
• But, evidently the biggest key to Christie addiction lies in her having more than 9 characters.

The Importance of Nine

Why is the use of nine or more central characters so important to the success and popularity of Christie’s novels? Through the use of nine or more characters and more than nine plot lines, Christie forces readers to go into a hypnotic trance. As the readers’ minds become saturated with so much information, they begin to truly experience the novels. This stimulus overload could be considered the “it felt so real” syndrome, where the reader actually feels as if they are participating in the book right along with the characters.

Future mystery novelists could learn a lot from the works of Agatha Christie. By keeping her writing accessible to all readers and the use of plot devices and the “code” She became one of the world’s best selling novelists.