Black Coffee: A Hercule Poirot Novel

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and more than 15 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.... According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly four billion copies, and her estate claims that her works rank third, after those of William Shakespeare and the Bible, as the most widely published books. According to Index Translationum, Christie is the most translated individual author, with only the collective corporate works of Walt Disney Productions surpassing her. Her books have been translated into at least 103 languages. Agatha Christie published two autobiographies: a posthumous one covering childhood to old age; and another chronicling several seasons of archaeological excavation in Syria and Iraq with her second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan.
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Charles Thomas Osborne, born 24 November 1927 in Brisbane, Australia, is a journalist, critic, poet and novelist, and a recognised authority on opera. He was assistant editor of The London Magazine from 1958 until 1966, literature director of the Arts Council of Great Britain from 1971 until 1986,... and chief theatre critic of the London Daily Telegraph from 1986 to 1991. He is the only author the Agatha Christie Estate has ever allowed to produce adapted works in her name. Osborne is the recipient of the Commendatore dell'Ordine della Stella della solidarietà italiana for his outstanding contribution to the works of Verdi. Osborne's father hailed originally from Devon and his mother was from Vienna, a fact to which he attributes his lifelong love of opera. He went to school locally, then studied at the University of Queensland. Osborne then worked in literary and musical journalism and in repertory theatre in Australia and Britain, where he settled permanently in 1953. He played the role of Front Gunner Foxlee in the 1955 film The Dam Busters, and acted in the play Black Coffee by Agatha Christie, which he later adapted as a novel.
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