Agatha Christie Trivia
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47 free Agatha Christie trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
42 free Agatha Christie trivia questions with answers. Agatha Christie sold more than two billion books, and this quiz is for the readers who have worked through a good share of them. Forty-two questions cover Hercule Poirot's little grey cells and his New York Times obituary, Miss Marple's village of St Mary Mead, Tommy and Tuppence, Ariadne Oliver and Captain Hastings, plus the great novels: The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, Death on the Nile and Curtain. The life gets equal billing: her Torquay childhood, the hospital dispensary work that taught her poisons, the eleven days she went missing in 1926, the archaeologist she married, the Mary Westmacott pen name, Greenway, and The Mousetrap's record-breaking run. Easy questions ask who Poirot is; hard ones want the hotel where she was found and the play she wrote for Queen Mary. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Christie and her works, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which TV series blamed Christie's 1926 disappearance on a giant alien wasp?
Doctor Who
Doctor Who's 2008 episode 'The Unicorn and the Wasp' has the Doctor and Donna help Christie solve a country-house murder on the day she vanishes.
Q 02In which English seaside town was Agatha Christie born in 1890?
Torquay
In Torquay her mother thought children shouldn't learn to read until eight, but young Agatha taught herself to read years earlier.
Q 03About how many copies of Agatha Christie's books have been sold worldwide?
About 2 billion
About 2 billion copies have sold, yet her first novel was turned down by several publishers before The Bodley Head accepted it.
Q 04What wartime job gave Christie her expert knowledge of poisons?
Working in hospital dispensaries
Working in hospital dispensaries, she qualified as an apothecary's assistant in 1917 and later put that poison lore into her plots.
Q 05When Christie vanished, which author took one of her gloves to a medium?
Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle hoped a medium could find her, while fellow crime writer Dorothy L. Sayers joined the search on the ground.
Q 06Where was Christie eventually found after her 1926 disappearance?
A hydropathic hotel in Harrogate
At a hydropathic hotel in Harrogate she had registered under the surname of her husband's mistress, Nancy Neele.
Q 07Christie's second husband, Max Mallowan, worked in which profession?
Archaeologist
Archaeologist Max Mallowan took Christie on his digs in Syria and Iraq, and she chronicled camp life in the memoir Come, Tell Me How You Live.
Q 08Under what pseudonym did Christie publish six non-crime novels?
Mary Westmacott
Mary Westmacott's true identity stayed secret for well over a decade before the press finally exposed it.
Q 09On a 1922 world tour, Christie and her first husband were among the first Britons known to do what?
Surf standing up
They learned to ride boards lying down in South Africa, then began to surf standing up in Honolulu later that year.
Q 10In 1971 Christie was promoted to which honour?
Dame Commander (DBE)
Her husband had been knighted three years earlier, so she could also be styled Lady Mallowan.
Q 11In 1955 Christie became the first person to receive which honour from the Mystery Writers of America?
The Grand Master Award
She was also co-president of the Detection Club from 1958 until her death.
Q 12Christie's holiday home on the River Dart, now owned by the National Trust, is called what?
Greenway
During the Second World War, Greenway was requisitioned and housed child evacuees and then the US Coast Guard.
Q 13Hercule Poirot is a refugee from which country?
Belgium
Belgium's wartime refugees gave Christie her idea: a former great Belgian policeman living in England would make a plausible detective.
Q 21The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is famous for what twist?
The narrator is the murderer
The narrator is the murderer, Dr Sheppard, a twist that helped shape crime fiction; in 2013 crime writers voted the book the best crime novel ever.
Q 22Who played Poirot on radio in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in 1939?
Orson Welles
Orson Welles took two roles in the hour-long 1939 broadcast, voicing both Poirot and Dr Sheppard.
Q 23Under what title was Poirot's Orient Express case first published in the United States?
Murder in the Calais Coach
Q 14What does Poirot famously call the mental faculties he relies on to solve cases?
The little grey cells
Poirot trusts his little grey cells, and in The Murder on the Links he mocks a rival crawling after clues as 'the human foxhound'.
Q 15In 1975 Poirot became the first fictional character to receive what honour from The New York Times?
A front-page obituary
The front-page obituary ran in August 1975, weeks before Curtain, the novel in which Poirot dies, reached bookshops.
Q 16In Christie's stories, Poirot's London home and office is in which block of flats?
Whitehaven Mansions
ITV filmed Whitehaven Mansions at Florin Court, an Art Deco block in London, so a 2013 fire there made news as a blaze at Poirot's home.
Q 17Which actor played Poirot on ITV for nearly 25 years?
David Suchet
David Suchet kept going until his 70 episodes had covered all the substantial Poirot stories, finishing in 2013.
Q 18In which novel did Poirot make his first appearance?
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Christie wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles after her sister Madge doubted she could write a good detective story.
Q 19In Christie's first novel, Emily Inglethorp is poisoned with what?
Strychnine
Strychnine in her regular tonic turned deadly when an added bromide made it sink to the bottom, so the last dose killed her.
Q 20Poirot's friend and narrator Captain Hastings emigrates to which country after marrying?
Argentina
After The Murder on the Links, Christie married Hastings off to Dulcie Duveen and sent the couple to run a ranch in Argentina.
Murder in the Calais Coach was its American title, and the novel first appeared in America, as a Saturday Evening Post serial, before any British edition.
Q 24The kidnapping at the heart of Murder on the Orient Express was inspired by which real 1932 crime?
The Lindbergh baby kidnapping
The Lindbergh baby kidnapping was still unsolved when the novel came out in 1934; police arrested Bruno Hauptmann that September.
Q 25In Death on the Nile, Poirot travels aboard which steamer?
The Karnak
Christie drew on her own travels in Egypt for the voyage, in which the Karnak carries Poirot up the Nile from Shellal to Wadi Halfa.
Q 26In The A.B.C. Murders, the killer's first victim, Alice Ascher, is killed in which town?
Andover
Andover is where the killer strikes first, after taunting Poirot with a written warning of the crime.
Q 27And Then There Were None is set on an isolated island off the coast of which county?
Devon
Soldier Island lies off Devon, and Christie drew on the county's Burgh Island, whose hotel she often visited.
Q 28In And Then There Were None, who turns out to be the killer?
Mr Justice Wargrave
Mr Justice Wargrave faked his own death with the doctor's unwitting help, then killed the doctor and carried on down his list.
Q 29In which fictional village does Miss Marple live?
St Mary Mead
In St Mary Mead Miss Marple studies village life, which she believes shows her the full range of human wickedness behind any crime.
Q 30Miss Marple's first full-length novel was which 1930 book?
The Murder at the Vicarage
The Murder at the Vicarage kills off Colonel Protheroe, a man so widely disliked that almost the whole village had a motive.