Agatha Christie's travels with her archaeologist husband inspired her

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

This sentence has a pronoun agreement error. Subject and object pronouns cannot refer back to possessive nouns; they must refer only to subject and object nouns. The subject in this sentence is "Agatha Christie's travels," not Agatha Christie herself. The first instance of "her" is correct because this pronoun is used as a possessive: "her [Agatha Christie's] archaeologist husband." However, the second instance of "her," an object pronoun, is incorrect: "inspired her [Agatha Christie, who is not an object in this sentence] to write..."


(A) This choice is incorrect as it repeats the original sentence.

(B) This choice illogically states that the travels inspired the novels themselves, rather than inspiring Christie to write the novels.

(C) This choice introduces a false cause-effect statement. The original meaning indicates that Christie traveled because her husband was an archaeologist. According to this choice, however, Christie used their travels as inspiration because her husband was an archaeologist, which is clearly illogical.

(D) This choice seems to indicate that Christie and her husband were inspired to write the novels together. This cannot be the case because this choice also clearly states
that they are "her mystery novels," not both of theirs.

(E) CORRECT. This choice corrects the original pronoun agreement error by moving the second instance of "her" in front of "mystery novels," which changes it from an object pronoun to a possessive pronoun: "Agatha Christie's travels...her [Agatha Christie's] mystery novels..."