title: The Murder at the Vicarage & The Mysterious Affair at Styles (The First Miss Marple Mystery -and- The First Hercule Poirot Mystery) (Hercule Poirot Mysteries)
author: Agatha Christie
description: ''<i>The Murder at the Vicarage</i> marks the debut of Agatha Christie's unflappable and much beloved female detective, Miss Jane Marple. With her gift for sniffing out the malevolent side of human nature, Miss Marple is led on her first case to a crime scene at the local vicarageIt is a race against the clock as Miss Marple sets out on the twisted trail of the mysterious killer without so much as a bit of help from the local police.'' --<i>Library Journal</i> on <i>The Murder at the Vicarage</i><br /><br />''You may safely make a wager with yourself that until you have heard M. Poirot's final word on the mysterious affair at Styles, you will be kept guessing at its full solution and will certainly never lay down this most entertaining book.'' --<i>New York Times</i> on <i>The Mysterious Affair at Styles</i>
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  [About the Author](../Text/9780061750090_TOC.xhtml#about)
  
  
  
  
  
  Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any
  language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more
  than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign
  languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story
  collections, nineteen plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the
  name Mary Westmacott.
  
  
  
  
  
  She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital
  dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with
  her debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. With The Murder in the
  Vicarage, published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane
  Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime-
  fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker
  Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp.
  
  
  
  
  
  Ma