The "little grey cells" of Agatha Christie fans are to be treated to another crime-sleuthing adventure from Hercule Poirot for the first time in nearly 40 years.
The much-loved Belgian detective is set to solve more murder and mysteries via the pen of international bestselling crime writer Sophie Hannah, a project that has the backing of the Christie family and which will be published by HarperCollins and in September 2014.
Hannah is a published author of psychological crime fiction and her most recent novel, The Carrier, is a tale of a dark crime when two 'strangers' are forced to share a hotel room.
Sophie Hannah with Mathew Prichard, Agatha’s grandson and chairman of Agatha Christie Ltd Hannah said: "I hope to create a puzzle that will confound and frustrate the incomparable Hercule Poirot for at least a good few chapters.
"Agatha Christie was the writer who made me fall in love with mystery fiction, at the age of 13.
"It was Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple who, between them, made me want to devote my working life to crime fiction, and it was Christie's brilliant plotting and deep understanding of the human psyche that shaped my identity as a crime writer."
(l-r) David Suchet, Roger Lloyd Pack, Elliott Gould in the ITV Poirot production 'The Mystery of the Blue Train' in 2005 Poirot has been thwarting dastardly deeds since 1920, with Christie's first book The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Written during the First World War, Christie drew on inspiration from her work at a hospital dispensary, giving her an insider knowledge on the murderous poisons she later wrote about.
During this time, Belgian refugees would have been found in many parts of the English countryside, including Christie's hometown of Torquay - perhaps she bumped into a real life character reminiscent of Poirot?
Christie's 80 crime novels, short story collections and 19 plays have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in foreign languages. The 'Queen of Crime' has only been outsold by the Bible and Shakespeare.
Agatha Christie pictured in 1954 Mathew Prichard, Chairman of Agatha Christie Limited and grandson of Agatha Christie, believes that Hannah is the right person to write the first Poirot story in 39 years.
"[Sophie Hannah's] idea for a plot line was so compelling and her passion for my grandmother’s work so strong, that we felt that the time was right for a new Christie to be written."
Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907)
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D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
When he died, Laurence was regarded as a writer of pornography who had gained many enemies throughout his life and spent much of it in voluntary exile. Even after death he wasn't immune from scandal, with the 1960 <em>Lady Chatterley</em> trial becoming one of the most famous literary controversies of all time when the book's publishers Penguin were tried under the Obscene Publications Act.
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (born 1947)
At the centre of what was perhaps the most famous literary scandal in modern history, Rushdie's <em>The Satanic Verses</em> provoked protests from Muslims in several countries, some violent. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwā issued by Iran's Ayatollah in 1989.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)
After working as a political spy and ending up in prison for not straightening her debts, this fair-faced rebel finally settled down enough to start a literary career. Along with two fellow women writers Aphra Behn scandalised the male critics by writing about women's sexual desires - they were called the "naughty triumvirate". Speaking of women of pleasure...
John Cleland (1709-1789)
When Cleland's erotic novel, <em>Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure</em>, was first published in the mid-eighteenth century, he, his publisher and printer were promptly arrested. In court, Cleland disavowed the novel, and the book was officially withdrawn, not to be legally published again for over a century.
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Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
When his overtly sexual poetry collection <em>Leaves of Grass</em> was first published in 1855, Whitman was immediately fired from his job at the US Department of the Interior. The book was considered profane and immoral in its exaltation of pleasure, but the bad press didn't stop Whitman spending the rest of his life writing and rewriting this American epic.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
Most controversial writers learn not to let the critics get to them, but Russian author Solzhenitsyn didn't have much choice. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974 for his criticism of the regime and harrowing descriptions of life in a gulag, one of many dissidents to be forced to leave their country, but the only one to have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
Being stabbed in a dodgy Deptford backstreet wasn't (believe it or not) the peak of this devilish playwright's scandalous career whose play, <em>Doctor Faustus</em>, was said to drive people insane. After his death his translation of Ovid was banned and copies publicly burned as part of a crackdown on offensive material.
William Borroughs (1914-1997)
Burroughs' semi-autobiographical book about heroin addiction, <em>Naked Lunch</em>, proved extremely controversial both for its content and its obscene language when it was first published in 1959. It was banned in Boston and Los Angeles and was one of the most recent American books over which an obscenity trial was held - though that's perhaps not saying much when we consider our next contender in the controversy charts...
Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
When this duo published <em>And Tango Makes Three</em> in 2005 they couldn't have guessed the stir it would cause, or could they? The children's book about two penguin parents in a same sex relationship caused uproar amongst some adults in the United States, for its depiction of homosexuality in animals. It became America's most challenged book for three years running.
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