Crime Collection - 24 Volumes - Agatha Christie 1969-1972 - Paul Hamlyn, London - First Edition Thus The works by the ‘Queen of Crime’ - 72 novels and short story collections hand-bound in twenty four scarlet-red morocco volumes (three titles per volume). An eye-catching and comprehensive set including all the elusive early titles, from The Mysterious Affair at Styles and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd to Hallowe'en Party and Passenger to Frankfurt.

The only major collection of Christie's novels to date, issued as a set for subscribers and endorsed by Agatha Christie. It includes all the published crime novels up to 1970, and features a foreword by the author in the first volume.

Christie’s works have stood the test of time. In 2013,
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was voted the best crime novel ever by 600 fellow writers of the Crime Writers' Association, and she is listed by the Guinness Book of Records as the best-selling novelist of all time, her novels have sold an estimated two billion copies, and her estate claims that her works come third in the rankings of the world's most-widely published books, behind Shakespeare's works and the Bible. They have been translated into over 100 languages, with and Then There Were None selling over 100 million copies (as at 2014), making it the world’s best selling mystery ever.

Reference: Haycraft,
Murder for Pleasure 129.
  Dame Agatha Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (1890 - 1976) - the first of the really distinguished women writers in the field of detective fiction.

‘Born in Torquay, on the Devon coast, to an American father who died when she was young, thus raised and educated by her English mother who urged her to write stories at an early age. ‘A neighbour, the author Eden Phillpotts, also lent encouragement. Music was another early interest, but a year in Paris convinced sixteen-year-old Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller that she would never be an opera singer. In 1914, a few months after the outbreak of war, she married a young army officer, Archibald Christie, later a colonel, C.M.G. and D.S.O. When he was ordered to France, Mrs. Christie entered a V.A.D. hospital at Torquay.

“Toward the end of the war,” she writes, “I planned a detective story. I had read many detective novels, as I found they were excellent to take one’s mind off one’s worries. After discussing one with my sister, she said it was almost impossible to find a
good detective story, where you didn’t know who had committed the crime. I said I thought I could write one. She was doubtful about it. Thus spurred on, I wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles.”

This, the first of the Poirot stories, had a difficult time finding a publisher, and it was not until after the Armistice and the birth of Mrs. Christie’s only daughter that it appeared in print, in 1920. A modest success, the book encouraged its author to further her efforts, which in a little more than two decades have brought her the consistently highest financial rewards believed to have been achieved from book and magazine rights by any writer of detective fiction exclusively.

Most readers believe that Agatha Christie’s great popularity dates from
Roger Ackroyd, as it clearly deserved to, and chronologically such is the case. But the truth is that this memorable story was primarily a connoisseur’s item when it was first published and that Mrs. Christie’s introduction to a wider public arrived independently the same year through a bizarre sequence of events that might of come from one of her own novels. As reported by the press in December, 1926, the author vanished from her home without warning. A nation-wide search was instituted; anonymous reports of foul play reached the police; amateur detectives offered assistance and fantastic theories. At length the missing writer was located in a Yorkshire health resort, registered under the name of the woman who subsequently became Colonel Christie’s second wife. Physicians pronounced Mrs. Christie a victim of amnesia, and the affair quickly disappeared from the head-lines. The proverbial nine-day sensation was over. But in the meantime two newspapers had begun serialising her stories, reprints of her earlier works sold out of stock, and her name and that of her detective were thenceforth household words.’ - Howard Haycraft, Murder for Pleasure, 1941.

Christie’s works have stood the test of time. In 2013,
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was voted the best crime novel ever by 600 fellow writers of the Crime Writers' Association, and she is listed by the Guinness Book of Records as the best-selling novelist of all time, her novels have sold an estimated two billion copies, and her estate claims that her works come third in the rankings of the world's most-widely published books, behind Shakespeare's works and the Bible. They have been translated into over 100 languages, with and Then There Were None selling over 100 million copies (as at 2014), making it the world’s best selling mystery ever.

Reference: Haycraft,
Murder for Pleasure 129.

The set comprises (with publication date):- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, They do it with Mirrors, Mrs. McGinty's Dead (1969); Cards on the Table, N or M?, A Murder is Announced (1969); Appointment with Death, Crooked House, Sad Cypress (1969); 4.50 from Paddington, Lord Edgware Dies, Murder in Mesopotamia (1969); Murder on the Orient Express, Death in the Clouds, Why didn't they ask Evans? (1969); The Murder on the Links, A Pocket Full of Rye, Destination Unknown (1969); The Hollow, The Moving Finger, Three Act Tragedy (1969); Mystery of the Blue Train, The Listerdale Mystery (short stories), Murder at the Vicarage (1970); Murder is Easy, Dead Man's Folly, The Man in the Brown Suit (1970); The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, They came to Baghdad, The ABC Murders (1970); Ordeal by Innocence, One Two Buckle my Shoe, Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1970); Cat among the Pigeons, The Labours of Hercules, Hickory Dickory Dock (1970); The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Ten Little Niggers, Dumb Witness (1970); The Pale Horse, The Big Four, The Secret Adversary (1970); Peril at End House, The Body in the Library, Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1970); Death on the Nile, Towards Zero, After the Funeral (1970); Sparkling Cyanide, The Secret of Chimneys, Five Little Pigs (1970); Evil Under the Sun, Death Comes as the End, The Sittaford Mystery (1970); A Caribbean Mystery, Taken at the Flood, The Seven Dials Mystery (1971); By the Pricking of my Thumbs, The Mysterious Mr. Quin, Endless Night (1971); Hallowe'en Party, Passenger to Frankfurt, The Thirteen Problems (1971); The Clocks, Third Girl, Murder in the Mews (1971); Partners in Crime, At Bertram's Hotel, The Hound of Death (1972); Nemesis, Parker Pyne Investigates, Poirot Investigates (1972).

Twenty four octavo volumes (set size 20.8x13.5x82.5cm)
  Elegantly bound in three-quarter scarlet red oasis morocco leather over matching cloth, spines with raised bands ruled and decorated in gilt and twin black morocco title labels lettered in gilt.   Condition: A lovely fine set, one or two with slight mark or abrasion along top edge from former publishers red tint, in a handsome modern binding.   Ref: 110824   Price: HK$ 48,000