2 The post-war detective fiction boom: historical and social context

In this section you’ll start to gain some insights into the contexts of detective fiction in the post-First World War era. You’ll learn about Agatha Christie’s life and you’ll think about the significance of detective fiction as a genre written and read, increasingly, by women. You’ll finish this section by thinking about the inter-war political contexts of Christie’s writing.

A black-and-white photograph of Agatha Christie.
Figure 1 Agatha Christie, 1926.