CIS: The Agatha Christie birthday quiz!

Win a fantastic prize! On 15 September 1890, arguably Britain’s favourite crime fiction writer of all time was born in Torquay, Devon. So, today we’re celebrating the birthday of Agatha Christie. And with it we’ve got a quiz to win a superb illustrated edition of the Miss Marple short stories from The Folio Society worth £29.95.

Christie’s works have been translated into almost every conceivable language, and have been adapted for the stage, cinema and television countless times. Like many others before and since, Christie was inspired the writing of Wilkie Collins and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Her first published novel was The Mysterious Affair At Styles, and was published in the USA in 1920, followed shortly by its UK release in 1921. It introduced the world to ‘a quaint dandyfied little man’ – none other than the immortal Hercule Poirot. She went on to create Miss Marple, and to write 66 crime novels and 15 short story collections.

Win a collectors’ edition of Miss Marple short stories
To mark what would be Agatha Christie’s 123rd birthday, we’ve come up with a quiz for you. If you figure out this little mystery, email in your answer. Agatha Christie reveled in inventing ever more ingenious ways for her characters to be murdered. Simply identify how the following ten victims were killed, and you could be in with a chance of winning a beautifully produced book, and a darned good read…

1. Thomas Rogers in And Then There Were None
2. Anna Stravinska in 4.50 From Paddington
3. Mr Ratchett in Murder On The Orient Express
4. Linnet Ridgeway in Death On The Nile
5. Louise Leidner  in Murder In Mesopotamia
6. Amyas Crale in Five Little Pigs
7. Colonel Lucius Protheroe in The Murder At The Vicarage
8. Barbara Franklin in Curtain
9. Rex Fortescue in A Pocket Full of Rye
10. Eleanor Vansittart in Cat Among The Pigeons

How to enter
When you’ve figured it out, send your answers in an email headed ‘Agatha Christie 123′ to the following address: info <at> crimefictionlover.com. (Replace the <at> with @ – this is done to prevent spam.) Include your name and address, and make sure you enter before 10pm Pacific time on Monday. See the rules below.

Rules – because you have to have ‘em
1) Enter as many times as you want. 2) We accept entries from anywhere in the world. 3) We will draw the winner at random from the entries containing the correct answers. 4) No cash alternative. 5) The competition closes for entries at 10pm Pacific Time on Monday 16 September 2013. 6) The judge’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

Close-up on the prize
A big thank-you to The Folio Society for providing such an excellent prize. Here’s a look at the copy of Miss Marple Short Stories that we have to give away. There are 20 short stories inside including The Tuesday Night Club, A Christmas Tragedy, The Case of the Perfect Maid and Ingots of Gold.

The book will arrive in a finely made black cardboard box.

It’s inlayed with a Folio Society leaf, bookmark, tissue paper for padding and the book in its slipcase.

Here’s a look at that luxurious buckram bound book emerging from the slipcase.

And here’s the book on its own, sitting on the carpet at CFL headquarters.

It’s a wonderful reading experience across 320 pages, with illustrations by Andrew Davidson. The Folio Society has also produced a brilliant boxed set of four Miss Marple novels that you can find more about here.

Finally, good luck. Whether you win or not, keep following us on Twitter where we celebrate the birthdays of great authors, past and present, on a daily basis.