DBWI: Agatha Christie didn't vanish forever

In 1926, English crime novelist Agatha Christie mysteriously vanished, never to be seen again. It is widely believed she was either a suicide or the victim of a murder by her husband, but nothing has ever been proven. Anyway, if not for that sensational event, I suspect her novels would long since have been forgotten. (OTOH, while I dislike the cult that has been built around her since her disappearance, I cannot approve the mockery in Edmund Wilson's heartless essay "Who Cares Who Killed Agatha Christie?"...)
 
OOC: This is a pretty interesting topic. I checked Wikipedia and found out that Christie's pre-1926 published works consisted of two Poirot mysteries, one Tommy and Tuppence mystery, and al-ot of non-crime related short stories. No Miss Marple yet. With Poirot just getting established as a character, it would have been reasonable if in this universe Agatha Christie was known mainly as a short story writer, and for her disappearance, without many people realizing that she had started to write crime novels right before her disappearance.
 
One reason I doubt that she would have been very successful if she had not vanished is that she showed no promise of creating a recurring detective forever associated with her name like Dupin with Poe, Holmes with Conan Doyle, or Lord Peter Wimsey with Dorothy Sayers. Yes, there was that Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, but he was already described as an old man when Christie introduced him in *The Mysterious Affair at Styles* (written in 1916, published in 1920). It's hardly likely that she would have gone on writing about him after the early 1930's at the latest.
 
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One reason I doubt that she would have been very successful if she had not vanished is that she showed no promise of creating a recurring detective forever asociated with her name like Dupin with Poe, Holmes with Conan Doyle, or Lord Peter Wimsey with Dorothy Sayers. Yes, there was that Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, but he was already described as an old man when Christie introduced him in *The Mysterious Affair at Styles* (written in 1916, published in 1920). It's hardly likely that she would have gone on writing about him after the early 1930's at the latest.

Of course he could have picked the solution of a non-aging protagonist like Wodehouse did with Jeeves and Wooster - or continue the stories with a descendant or relative of Poirot's at the helm. Are any relatives of him actually mentioned in any of the stories?
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
I don't think Conan Doyle would have ended his career with The Disappearance of Mary Westmacott, which is a shame because I kinda like it.

Though more obviously Christie's career would have probobly gone well. Before she vanished, she was a promising author with the potential to be the next Conan Doyle- Murder on the Links, ASR, was compared to his work favorably. Certainly wouldn't have been a Marie Corelli, as I've seen suggested.
 
I don't think Conan Doyle would have ended his career with The Disappearance of Mary Westmacott, which is a shame because I kinda like it.

OOC: The first novel Christie had written under the pen name Mary Westmacott was Giant's Bread in 1930; if she had permanently disappeared in 1926, this pen name would never have come to life.
 
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