Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley.
Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park,, known professionally as P. D. James, was an English novelist and life peer. Her rise to fame came with her series of detective novels featuring the police commander and poet, Adam Dalgliesh.
Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, was an English author of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries.
Birds of a Feather is a British sitcom originally broadcast on BBC One from 16 October 1989 to 24 December 1998, then revived on ITV from 2 January 2014 to 24 December 2020. The series stars Pauline Quirke and Linda Robson, with Lesley Joseph, created by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, who also wrote many of the episodes.
Pauline Perpetua Sheen is an English actress who has played Sharon Theodopolopodous in the long-running comedy series Birds of a Feather from 1989 to 1998, and again from 2014 to 2017. For this role, she won the 1990 British Comedy Award for Best Newcomer. She was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for her role in the 1996 BBC miniseries The Sculptress. Her other television credits include Maisie Raine (1998–1999), Down to Earth (2000–2003), Emmerdale (2010–2012) and Broadchurch (2013–2015).
Minette Caroline Mary Walters DL is an English crime writer.
Dead Man's Folly is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in October 1956 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 5 November of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.95 and the UK edition at twelve shillings and sixpence (12/6). It features Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver.
Linda Patricia Mary Dunford is an English actress and television presenter. She is best known for playing Tracey Stubbs in the sitcom Birds of a Feather and her appearances as a weekly panellist on the ITV series Loose Women.
Margaret Jones was an English actress, best known for playing Blanche Hunt in the British soap opera Coronation Street, a role which she first portrayed in 1974 and played regularly from the late-1990s until shortly before her death. She won the British Soap Award for Best Comedy Performance in 2005 and 2008.
Caroline Cruice Goodall is an English actress and screenwriter. She was nominated for AFI Awards for her roles in the 1989 miniseries Cassidy, and the 1995 film Hotel Sorrento. Her other film appearances include Hook (1991), Cliffhanger (1993), Schindler's List (1993), Disclosure (1994), White Squall (1996), The Princess Diaries (2001) and The Best of Me (2014).
Anna Maxwell Martin, sometimes credited as Anna Maxwell-Martin, is a British actress. She has won two British Academy Television Awards, for her portrayals of Esther Summerson in the BBC's 2005 adaptation of Bleak House and "N" in Channel 4's 2008 adaptation of Poppy Shakespeare. She is also known for her roles as DCS Patricia Carmichael in BBC One crime drama Line of Duty (2019–present) and as Kelly Major in Code 404 (2020–present). From 2016 to 2021, Maxwell Martin played the lead role in BBC TV comedy Motherland for which she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Female Comedy Performance.
North & South is a British television historical drama programme, produced by the BBC and originally broadcast in four episodes on BBC One in November and December 2004. It follows the story of Margaret Hale, a young woman from southern England who has to move to the North after her father decides to leave the clergy. The family struggles to adjust itself to the industrial town's customs, especially after meeting the Thorntons, a proud family of cotton mill owners who seem to despise their social inferiors. The story explores the issues of class and gender, as Margaret's sympathy for the town mill workers clashes with her growing attraction to John Thornton.
South Riding is a novel by Winifred Holtby, published posthumously in 1936.
Lindsay Ashford is a British crime novelist and journalist. Her style of writing has been compared to that of Vivien Armstrong, Linda Fairstein and Frances Fyfield. Many of her books follow the character of Megan Rhys, an investigative psychologist.
Missing is a British daytime television crime drama series starring Pauline Quirke and Mark Wingett. The series is set in a busy, under-resourced missing-persons unit, and follows the team led by DS Mary Jane "MJ" Croft (Quirke). The first series of five episodes aired on BBC One in 2009, with an extended second series of 10 episodes airing in 2010. It was filmed in and around Dover, and Tonbridge. The series also starred Felix Scott and Pooja Shah as Croft's sidekicks, Jason Doyle and Amy Garnett. Guest stars who appeared throughout the series run include Paul Nicholas, Brooke Kinsella, Gary Lucy, and Sylvia Syms.
Maisie Raine is a British television crime drama series, first broadcast on BBC One, that ran from 28 July 1998 to 9 July 1999. Pauline Quirke stars as the eponymous title character, an unorthodox detective whose hands on yet down-to-earth approach is not always appreciated by her superiors. Created by Stephen Bill, a total of twelve episodes were broadcast across two series. The first series features a running story arc involving Maisie's wayward brother Kelvin, and had a much lighter feel than the second, which featured grittier storylines including drug dealing, armed robbery, arson and murder.
Goggle-Eyes, or My War with Goggle-Eyes in the US, is a children's novel by Anne Fine, published by Hamilton in 1989. It features a girl who thinks she hates her mother's boyfriend. In the frame story, set in a Scottish day school, that girl Kitty tells her friend Helen about hating her mother's boyfriend.
Quirke is a crime drama television series that was first broadcast on BBC One and RTÉ One in 2014. The three-part series is based on the Quirke novels by John Banville, writing under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, and was adapted by Andrew Davies and Conor McPherson.
