Agatha Christie’s popularity is due to a combination no other mystery writer mastered, Declan Burke discovers.

Gone With The Wind author Margaret Mitchell has been crowned the queen of the literary put-down in a new poll.

SO IT’S almost midnight.

GRAEME McDOWELL, 31, from Portrush in Co Antrim, is awarded an MBE in the New Year Honours List today after a sensational golfing year.

JUST when you thought our sleaze-splattered banking sector could hardly get much murkier, up pops a money mystery worthy of Hercule Poirot.

KILLING a professor or a reverend in a library with an iron bar occupied millions of families worldwide for more than half a century — the upper-crust murders almost seemed akin to a decent murder mystery.

HE never glanced up. Never. It was head down all the way. No telling glances across at the opposition. No gesture to hammer home a point. Not a single behaviour that the camera would like.

The good and the great of the show business world turned out today to celebrate the life of actor, writer and raconteur Peter Ustinov.

Fans of Agatha Christie will get the chance to turn detective when some of the best-selling writer’s books are brought to life in computer games.

PETER USTINOV, a brilliant wit and mimic who won two Oscars in an eclectic acting career has died. He was 82.

IT was early, too early for a caper like this. Someone had leaked all the sauce about the airport out of town to the ingrates in the Teamsters and the precinct captain wanted to get to the bottom of it.