Agatha Christie Before marrying and starting a family in London, she had served in a Devon hospital during the First World War, tending to troops coming back from the trenches. She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six consecutive rejections, but this changed when "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", featuring Hercule Poirot, was published in 1920. During the Second World War, she worked as a pharmacy assistant at University College Hospital, London, acquiring a good knowledge of poisons which feature in many of her novels. "Guinness World Records" lists Christie as the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly
Death on the Nile expect great things of such a combination [of Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot] and you will not be disappointed.". In "The Observer"'s issue of 14 November 1937, "Torquemada" (Edward Powys Mathers) started off by saying, "First this week comes Agatha Christie. She scored, I contend, two outers in her last three shots; but she is back on the very centre of the bull with "Death on the Nile"." He summarized the set-up of the plot and then continued, "Terrible things happen and, without the formality of breaking off her narrative to issue a challenge, the author allows Poirot to summarize