Agatha Christie avoided professional writing her entire life.
Agatha Christie . Her novels have sold roughly 2 billion copies , and her estate claims that her works come third in the rankings of the world 's most-widely published books , behind only Shakespeare 's works and the Bible . Christie 's stage play The Mousetrap holds the world record for longest initial run . And Then There Were None is a mystery novel by English writer Agatha Christie , widely considered her masterpiece and described by her as the most difficult of her books to write . The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie , first published in June 1926 in the United Kingdom by William Collins , Sons and in the United States by Dodd , Mead and Company on 19 June 1926 .