Agatha Christie’s timeless and classic mystery novels and stories are set in villages, manors and cities all over the world: predominantly the United Kingdom, but many other countries in Europe and throughout Asia provide locales for her thrilling tales. However, Christie fans may have observed that despite her varied settings, the vast majority of her tales take place above the Equator. The one major exception is her book The Man in the Brown Suit, which features Cape Town and Bulawayo as key locations for her spunky protagonist Anne Beddingfield’s adventures.
Nevertheless, although Christie didn’t utilize the Southern Hemisphere more frequently as a locale, she did include a fairly wide variety of characters from countries such as Australia or South Africa that reflect both her personal acquaintance with the countries as well as her relationships with those hailing from these parts of the world.
Christie did in fact have quite a bit of personal experience with traveling around countries situated down under. Agatha Christie was a very well-traveled writer, out of personal passion for travel and also due to her second husband Max Mallowan’s career as an archaeologist. Christie joined Sir Mallowan on a number of his work expeditions, which informed a number of her novels in regards to settings in the Middle East. Together, they also ventured to various countries in the African continent in the Southern Hemisphere, as well as Australia and New Zealand.
However, it was Christie’s first husband, Archibald Christie, with whom she explored under the equator. At the time of her visit in 1922, present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe was part of the Republic of Rhodesia, a region that would later garner a few mentions in some of her works. In The Secret of Chimneys, readers learn that Anthony McCade meets James McGrath while in Bulawayo, which during Christie’s time of writing was still Rhodesia, but is currently part of Zimbabwe. In The Man in the Brown Suit, former Rhodesia also crops up when characters Anne and Harry spend time on the Zambezi river and Bulawayo as well.
In South Africa, she had a grand time surfing and collecting wooden animals. On a more serious note, her trip also coincided with a mining industry crisis, the Rand Rebellion. Christie would later use this incident when writing The Man in the Brown Suit. South Africa continued to crop up as a place of interest for Agatha Christie in the years to come. Notably, during Christie’s legendary disappearance in 1926, at one point she was a guest of the Swan Hydropathic Hotel under the name of “Teresa Neele” – and claimed to be from Cape Town. Christie bestowed a South African background or connection on a number of her characters, such as Simon Lee from Hercule Poirot’s Christmas having spent much of his youth diamond mining in South Africa, or John Eardsley as the son of a South African magnate in The Man in the Brown Suit.
Venturing even further away from Europe, Christie also spent time in Australia and New Zealand the same year (1922) as her African travels. The intrepid and adventurous Agatha took part in activities such as an 11-mile journey on foot to Otira Gorge in New Zealand, and taking the Noojee “bush tram” in Australia to visit timber forests. As one can imagine, given Christie’s excellent knowledge of plants and flowers that is evident in her work, she relished the exposure to different flora and fauna in both countries, enjoying a visit to botanical gardens in Wellington.
A number of Aussie and Kiwi characters went on to crop up in her writing, probably the most memorable two being Bert and Mildred Croft in Peril At End House; she bestowed them with some “stereotypical” Australian elements such as their call of “Coo-ee!” Gwenda Reed from Sleeping Murder was born and raised in New Zealand, and Una Drake in Partners in Crime is an Australian woman who is at the heart of a bet made by Tommy and Tuppence’s client.
And it would be remiss not to mention one of the most famous characters created by Christie spends years in the Southern Hemisphere in canon: Captain Hastings, who moves down to Argentina following the events of The Murder on the Links.
