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Taken at the Flood is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in March 1948 under the title of There is a Tide . . . and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in the November of the same year under Christie's original title.The US edition retailed at $2.50 and the UK edition at eight shillings and sixpence (8/6). It features her famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, and is set in 1946.

The novel tells a story of post-World War II England, when life seems turned upside down, with the relief of the end of the war, the changes from who lived and who died, and the economic challenge of post-war life, playing out for one family in a village not far from London. The detective Superintendent Spence is introduced in this novel, with whom Poirot works again in a few more stories. The Cloade family, brothers and one sister, have had many abrupt changes from the war, losing their brother Gordon in a London bombing raid shortly after his unexpected marriage to a young widow. One son is lost to fighting, a daughter returns from serving as a Wren, and another son seems to be making a successful venture at farming, despite losing his partner in the venture to the war. When the Wren Lynn returns, her interrupted engagement to her cousin resumes, with troublesome interruption from the brother of Uncle Gordon's widow Rosaleen. A stranger in the village, using the literary name Enoch Arden, blackmails David Hunter and is soon found murdered. Hercule Poirot is called in.

Richardson found the "doubly twisted" plot, to be "ingenious enough", but for him, "the quintessential zest, the sense of well-being which goes to make up that Christie feeling, is missing." Another reviewer was more pleased with the novel, saying that Poirot solves the mysteries "with all the acumen that has endeared him to Agatha Christie fans. Fantastic and topping." A review in 1990 was pleased to find a Christie novel tied distinctly to a specific year and world event, but had a more complex commentary on the novel as a whole, calling it a "Compulsive reworking of Tennysonian and Christiean themes, and pretty high up in the range of classic titles

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) 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 Mousetrap, which was performed in the West End from 1952 to 2020, as well as six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) 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.

Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon, and was largely home-schooled. She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six consecutive rejections, but this changed in 1920 when The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring detective Hercule Poirot, was published. Her first husband was Archibald Christie; they married in 1914 and had one child before divorcing in 1928. During both World Wars, she served in hospital dispensaries, acquiring a thorough knowledge of the poisons which featured in many of her novels, short stories, and plays. Following her marriage to archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930, she spent several months each year on digs in the Middle East and used her first-hand knowledge of his profession in her fiction.

According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author. Her novel And Then There Were None is one of the top-selling books of all time, with approximately 100 million copies sold. Christie's stage play The Mousetrap holds the world record for the longest initial run. It opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End of London on 25 November 1952, and by September 2018 there had been more than 27,500 performances. The play was closed down in March 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award. Later that year, Witness for the Prosecution received an Edgar Award for best play. In 2013, she was voted the best crime writer and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd the best crime novel ever by 600 professional novelists of the Crime Writers' Association. In September 2015, And Then There Were None was named the "World's Favourite Christie" in a vote sponsored by the author's estate. Most of Christie's books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games, and graphic novels. More than 30 feature films are based on her work.
(Wikipedia)