Comparing Nevil Shute And Agatha Christie

Both Nevil Shute and Agatha Christie, though their novels were set in Australia and Iraq, respectively, were natives of Great Britain. Their perspectives on World War II and the Cold War were influenced by the country in which they grew up and resided, though Shute would eventually move from Britain to Australia. Great Britain was hugely affected by World War II, and as one of the most powerful nations post-war, would most assuredly have become entangled in another war if one had broken out between the Soviet Union and the US. Britain’s Defence White Papers of 1951 described “‘an urgent need to strengthen the defences of the free world… and the purpose was ‘to prevent war’.” Interestingly, Britain had ties to both the Middle East and Australia

This, coupled with her free imagination, likely led to Christie’s becoming a writer. She began writing as a teenager and published her first book, a detective novel, in 1920. Various life events, such as spending a season in Cairo and making two trips to the Near East, contributed to Christie’s knowledge of the world and would later influence many of her works. Married twice with one daughter and spending much of her time, especially during World War II, working in hospitals, Christie’s writing of over 80 short stories and detective novels was no small feat. She would go on to become the best-selling novelist of all time, and received many awards and recognition for her work before her death in 1976. In 1951 she published They Came to Baghdad, which “signaled a return to a conspiracy motif she had first used in the 1927 Poirot novel, The Big Four,” writes Mary S. Wagoner in her biography of Christie. The novel, directly influenced by the Cold War events that were prevalent in society, quickly became a bestseller. Christie’s rich background of detective and spy novels was likely a major influence on the perspective taken in They Came to Baghdad, which culminates in a thrilling capture of the anti-Communist, anti-Capitalist ‘bad guys’ intent on sabotaging the peace talks that could lead to the resolution of the Cold War, and reward of the brave young heroine who risked her life for world peace. As a novelist who specialized in detective tales and short stories, it follows well that her Cold War-influenced novel would ultimately end with the triumph of the ‘good guys’ over evil, though it would take a dramatic series of events for this peace to