Sam: I'm Sam.
Neil: And I'm Neil.
Sam: Have you ever played the game, Cluedo, Neil?
The idea is that the person playing detective discovers who the murderer is,
where the crime took place, and which weapon was used.
Neil: The last time I played Cluedo it was Professor Plum,
in the library, with the dagger!
Sam: Cluedo is based on a very popular type of book – the murder mystery,
sometimes called a whodunnit – a story about a murder
which does reveal who the murderer is until the end.
Neil: The queen of murder mysteries is a British writer who was born in 1890.
Her books are read all over the world
and have been translated into a 103 different languages.
Her name is Agatha Christie.
Sam: To date over 2 billion copies of her crime novels have been sold worldwide,
making her the best-selling novelist of all time...
and the subject of this programme.
Neil: Perhaps her best-known story is 'Murder on the Orient Express',
a whodunnit featuring her most famous detective,
Hercule Poirot, who starred in 33 of Agatha Christie's books.