"in Africa" <- sorry, on second thoughts I think it was India.

Dear Pynchme,
How fascinating about Margaret Rutherford. I love to read of interesting lives. Sometimes the most unlikely people have the most amazing backgrounds.
For instance, I once picked up a book about a successful romance writer called E.F. Benson - the book was going out cheap at my newsagents so I bought it on the spur of the moment - and it turned out that his background was quite interesting. His father was the Archbishop of Canterbury, his mother, it was supposed may have been a lesbian and one of his brothers wrote Land Of Hope and Glory (if I remember correctly)...
Isn't it funny that I can't imagine Miss Marple as plump and I must admit that I haven't watched Margaret Rutherford in the role many times - but she did seem a trifle too vehement to me. But sometimes it's difficult to get past a certain actor playing a role. For instance, I always imagine Rumpole to look exactly like Leo McKern (There was quite a lot of whodunnit in The Rumpole stories as well) because I saw him in the role before I got around to John Mortimer's superb books.
As has already been mentioned,David Suchet playing myself is masterful - he plays the great Hercule Poirot even better than I do (blush).

It was intersting to read an earlier comment by Poirot, that it was AC's daughter who recommended Suchet for the role of Hercule. He is by far the best Poirot I have seen on screen, and is the sort of character one envisages when reading the books.

At home there is about 65 Agatha Christie books on my shelf including scripts. While not great literature I have fond memories of Agatha Christie having started collecting her books from the age of eight. If you get a chance to read any of the biographies or her autobiography, she had an unusual life and was quite an eccentric including staging her own disappearance.

If I feel like a light read, I still pick up an Agatha now and again. My favourite book is Sleeping Murder but it is almost impossible to choose.

The British and the BBC do mystery very well on screen (not only Agatha) even if they are not always faithful to the storyline.

Dear Pelican,
I get what you mean about dipping occasionally into Agatha's books - they are comforting in a way. I too have read biographies and her autobiography. They offer a good insight into her world. I admire the independence she found (after her first marriage ended) - and the life that she shared with her second husband Max Mallowan who was an archeologist. She set many of her later novels (as you know) in places where they used to go for "digs".
For me the essence of her work is always the contrast that she evokes between the respectable everyday middle-class world of the early twentieth century and "murder most foul".
Ruth Rendell is another popular writer of crime fiction whose penchant seems to be examining psychological types. And there is P.D James. Lastly, we shouldn't forget Umberto Eco's masterpiece, "The Name Of The Rose".

Im a bit old school and like some action so my favorite detective is Jim Rockford. Im fond of the Professionals too.

Jacques Derrida