In college, I was a literary snob. I read the Russians, the Greeks, the French, and the Romans (as opposed to the Italians). Just about the only American authors I read were Roth, Updike, and Heller. Males all, not a genre writer in the bunch.

This changed abruptly when during one Christmas vacation a bout of flu sent me whimpering to bed. In between fits of coughing I stared at the ceiling, bored out of my snobby little mind. The only reading material on hand was a carton of Agatha Christies I'd been duped into buying a week earlier at a yard sale. The wily seller had layered the top row with literary tomes guaranteed to suck in a nose-in-the-air college sophomore like myself, but once I lugged my $5 bargain home, I discovered the other layers held nothing but Christie, Christie, Christie, a writer much too lowbrow for me. But having already read everything else in my TV-less apartment, I swallowed my pride and grabbed The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.  

Whereupon Agatha Christie changed my life.

By the time I finished Ackroyd, Dame Agatha had liberated me from my ill-founded literary snobbery and sexism. She'd demonstrated that the logic inherent in a good puzzle ensures smart reading for smart people. As I read my way through the rest of her books, I discovered that - surprise, surprise - female sleuths could be logical, too. On the down side, Christie also taught me that mystery novels are as addictive as crack, so after closing the last book (A Murder Is Announced), I took myself to the nearest used bookstore, where I purchased more Christies. But that wasn't all. Her intelligent plotting had whetted my appetite for other mystery authors - especially the females - so for the next few months, I abandoned Roth, Updike, et al, to immerse myself in the feminine side of murder and mayhem. When the pendulum swung back, as it always does, I began reading the guys, too.  

The writer I eventually became learned the subtleties of character development from P.D. James, the importance of setting from Tony Hillerman, restraint in confrontational dialogue from James Sallis, and the interconnectedness of every human being from Kate Atkinson.  

Yet of all lessons learned, it is Agatha Christie's insistence on logic that remains paramount.