Over in the UK, the Royal Mail has issued a set of gorgeous stamps to honor Agatha Christie–it’s been 100 years since she finished writing her very first book, and these stamps are the perfect sort of celebration….
They are tiny mysteries.
Illustrated by Neil Webb and designed by Studio Sutherland, each of the stamps encourages collectors (or letter-senders) to use their detecting skills to better enjoy them. The stamp above features two of Christie’s famous detectives, Hastings and Poirot, going over a crime scene together. They help to form a skull for the stamp’s larger image, and the entire stamp is replicated on the bottle of poison that the murderer used on their victim.
This stamp features the profile of And Then There Were None‘s host (and murderer) as the island. The book’s main clue, the poem, can be read with a magnifying glass, and serves as the reflection of the moon.
The stamp for Murder On the Orient Express requires you to use the heat of a finger to discern the true killer! The red figure serves as a “red herring.” To discover the true culprit, you place your thumb over the window curtain, and it disappears to reveal another figure.
Other clues can be found in the images themselves, or with the use of UV light. To see the rest of the collection, head on over to Slate and see how the stamps look under magnification and different light!