“A Christie for Christmas”: Why Murder under the Mistletoe Appeals to Readers

Since not a creature is stirring in my household this early morning, I have time for a holiday post, and Agatha Christie is on my mind.

During the early part of her publishing career, Christie not infrequently published more than one novel (or a novel and volume of short stories) each year.

Once it was established, perhaps by publisher fiat, that the reading public desired precisely one book annually, on a predictable schedule, the tradition of “a Christie for Christmas” was established.

Inevitably, a few of the Christie books and short stories include Yuletide themes. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas is the most obvious example, and there’s also the short story “The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding.”

Other writers have followed suit, with seasonally-appropriate crime offerings. My favourites include a handful of stories by Reginald Hill, Val McDermid, and P.D. James. You can also seek out fiction by Alexandra Benedict, Peter Swanson, and Canadian writers Vicky Delany and Nita Prose.

I’ve been on an Agatha Christie binge for a week or so. The novels are short and easy to read, so a book a day is manageable or, in a busy season that includes wrapping presents and decking the halls, a novel every other day.

And in Christie’s novels and stories there are many pleasures to accompany the inevitable horror that contemporary readers feel in encountering the not infrequent and casual racist and antisemitic comments, most of them voiced by characters we’re supposed to like.

My recent reading includes Nemesis, a late Miss Marple novel, which is not great at the level of either plot or dialogue (usually two Christie strengths). It also includes multiple characters who express views of sexual assault that have really not aged well but were likely archaic even in the 1960s. The novel meanders in a manner that is unusual for Christie, and there are several inexplicable elements, starting with the key event that gets the plot rolling: the death, after a long illness, of a mysterious millionaire who has tasked Miss Marple with solving a mystery of some of kind. His written instructions, however, are thin on details, so she sets off, dutifully, on the bus tour of great homes and gardens that he has arranged for her, hoping for some clarity about what the mystery is that she’s supposed to be solving.

Lord Edgware Dies is a much better Poirot novel from the early 1930s, and I’m reminded that Christie’s view of American actresses is oddly ambivalent: they turn up in a number of the books and stories, and they’re always coolly gorgeous and glamorous narcissists. Did Christie get to know very many American starlets?

A favourite re-read, and the final Marple novel, is Sleeping Murder, published posthumously in 1976, several months after Christie’s death. Come to think of it, January 12th of 2026 will mark fifty years since Christie’s death–which should have been significant for Canadian copyright of her novels: more below.

For me, Sleeping Murder is among the most haunting of Christie’s novels. Gwenda, newly married, has recently arrived in the UK after many years in New Zealand, where she grew up. She falls in love with a house that she is insistent they move into, but then she begins to fear she is losing her mind as she has visions of violence in the house.

We get an appearance from Miss Marple’s writer-nephew Raymond, and I especially like the way my favourite Jacobean play, The Duchess of Malfi, features in the plot.

The adaptations, including the Suchet one, are very good. The BBC radio version is also supposed to be excellent, but I’ve been finding these more challenging to access since some recent changes to overseas availability of programming.

And as to copyright: the earliest Christie books have started to enter the public domain in the U.S., 95 years after first publication. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, for instance, is now freely available, and this copyright change can enable teaching more Christie novels. I’m all in favour of authors and their families collecting royalties, but surely by the third or fourth generation this becomes moot?

In the UK and many other countries, the crucial date is the year of the author’s death, rather than the date of publication, so readers will have to wait until 2046 for Christie’s fiction to enter the public domain.

In Canada, however, there was a legal change in 2022, to align with CUSMA (the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement that replaced/updated NAFATA). Before 2022, copyright endured for only half a century past the author’s death. Now Canadian law extends copyright to 70 years after the author’s death, which is also the case in the UK.

Why does this matter?

Because I anticipate that by the middle of this century we will see a great many more revisions of Christie series characters, but for now there are only the ones that the Estate has authorized. And we’re getting new Christies, sometimes even for Christmas.

Sophie Hannah ha produced several authorized Poirot novels, including the holiday-themed Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night and, most recently, The Last Death of the Year, which I’m saving for New Year’s Eve.

Lucy Foley, a terrific British writer, has been tasked with resurrecting Miss Marple, who will appear next year in Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, set in Switzerland.

The Marple: Twelve New Mysteries that came out a few years ago now appears to have been an extended audition for a new Marple writer, and I’m only sorry that we won’t see Marple novels from several of the other excellent writers in this collection, who include Val McDermid, Ruth Ware, Leigh Bardugo, and Natalie Haynes.

But speaking of accomplished and prolific Lucys: I recently picked up popular historian Lucy Worsley’s Agatha Christie biography (also a three-episode TV series), which I skimmed some time ago, and it’s worth reading. Worsley has a knack for combining scholarly research and a very readable prose style.

I find the long episode of Christie’s marriage to Max Mallowan, an archaeologist, especially intriguing.

Her first marriage, and her infamous disappearance for a number of days, are perhaps more dissected, but Christie gained a lot more material for her fiction in the many months she spent living with Max in not especially comfortable conditions near dig sites. In my 2026 TBR pile is Christie’s memoir of this experience, Come, Tell Me How You Live.

Happy Christmas to everyone who is celebrating, whether with family and friends or with a stack of mysteries to read.