The Millers had two other children: Margaret Frary Miller (1879–1950), called Madge, who was eleven years Agatha's senior, and Louis Montant Miller (1880–1929), called Monty, ten years older than Agatha.īefore marrying and starting a family in London, she had served in a Devon hospital during the First World War, tending to troops coming back from the trenches.

She is the creator of two of the most enduring figures in crime literature-Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple-and author of The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of modern theatre.Īgatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devon, England, U.K., as the youngest of three. According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author, having been translated into at least 103 languages. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation. She wrote 66 crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and six novels under a pseudonym in Romance. So, having searched online and using Google books and found nothing to link either name to drugs, I think it safe to say that neither of the 'dream drugs' map to contemporaneous street pharmaceuticals but are there as signposts to the reader.Agatha Christie also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, and was occasionally published under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan.ĭame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie is the best-selling author of all time. So with the Op's question about 'Dream Bombs' and the 'Emerald dreams' Frances sampled we have two drugs introducing the notion of an induced dream state. Have some more before I've drunk it all? Basil would make us try some new pills - Emerald Dreams.

Oh well, I suppose black coffee will be helpful. 'I was up too late last night,' she said. I believe that Christie introduces the notion of there being lots of 'new' drugs around, possibly as an authorial defense against people picking holes in the storyline if some real named drug such as LSD or Purple hearts wouldn't have quite the effect required by the narrative, but also as a means of dropping breadcrumbs for the reader that 'dreams' and 'drugs' are linked and important.Īt one point in the story, Claudia and Frances are in discussion, about Norma, David, the drug and party scene etc: The plot hinges on the dream state induced in Norma by drugs administered by Robert Orwell, posing as her father, and his wife.

Third Girl by Agatha Christie