Murder Isn't Easy: The Forensics of Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is one of our most beloved authors – a storyteller unparalleled in her clever plots and twisting tales. But Agatha was also a forensic expert; in each of her books she employs an expert weaving of human observation, ingenuity and genuine science of the era.

In Murder Isn’t Easy Carla Valentine illuminates all of Agatha’s incredible knowledge, showing how she stayed at the cutting edge of forensics from ballistics to fingerprint analysis, as seen through much-loved characters such as Poirot and Miss Marple.

From the glamour and grit of Agatha Christie’s stories, to the real-life cases that inspired them, Murder Isn’t Easy will immerse you in the forensics that influenced generations of writers and scientists alike.


Carla will explore how Christie kept at the cutting edge of developments in forensics: How would Poirot have been so easily able to identify a bullet from a Mauser pistol? How would Miss Marple have knowledge of blood spatter patterns?

While other children were devouring the works of Enid Blyton and Beatrix Potter, Carla Valentine was poring through the pages of Agatha Christie novels. It was this early fascination that led to her job as a pathology technician, trained in forensics and working in mortuaries.

Nearly every Agatha Christie story involves one - or, more commonly, several - dead bodies, and for a young Carla, a curious child already fascinated with biology, these stories and these bodies were perfect puzzles.

Of course, Agatha herself didn't talk of 'forensics' in the way we use it now, but in each tale she writes of twists and turns with her expert weave of human observation, ingenuity and genuine science of the era. Through the medium of the 'whodunnit', Agatha Christie was a pioneer of forensic science, and in Murder Isn't Easy Carla illuminates all of the knowledge of one of our most beloved authors.

• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.96 x 1.02 x 7.72 inches