All About Agatha (Christie)

Get comfortable, because this is a loooong episode (at this rate, Sleeping Murder will have to be released in six parts, like a miniseries). But can you blame me--and Jamie--for wanting to spend as much time as we did critiquing this stupendous (though flawed) late Marple novel? Put on your warmest pink scarf and your red-and-black-checked jumper, and beware of any "rocking stones" in the vicinity as you immerse yourself in the world of... Nemesis.

It may not be a heart-shaped box of chocolates wrapped in crinkly plastic, but I hope you'll enjoy my Valentine's confection for you in the form of a free-to-download, love-themed Patreon episode. (You can click the link below; it'll be the first episode to appear in the queue.) Enjoy! http://www.patreon.com/allaboutagatha

Another episode, another Sophie Hannah confection! Come for the Death on the Nile gush-fest and the discussion of character versus plot in contemporary crime fiction, stay for Sophie's shocking takedown of American English (I jest…). For bonus episodes, check out the All About Agatha Patreon site at: www.patreon.com/allaboutagatha.

We get lots of Poirot and Hastings in this fairly light-hearted short story, and lots of Poirot and Hastings and Lemon and Japp in the stupendously light-hearted episode based on this short story. In other words: a good time all around.

It wasn't easy recording my first episode without Catherine, but fortunately I had a friend to help me: Sophie Hannah, who duked out the rankings with me as my guest co-host. And what a time we had discussing this extremely flawed, though extremely fascinating late-career Christie thriller....

It was extremely difficult to edit this episode, which is the final one I recorded with my co-host, Catherine Brobeck, before she passed away. I hope you take a listen, and use it as an opportunity to celebrate her. Please know this is the spirit in which I'm offering it to you now. Happy holidays to all who celebrate them; I'm looking forward to a New Year in which we can continue to remember Catherine while continuing to celebrate Agatha Christie and the greater world of mysteries. And thank you--so much--for all your warmth and support during what has been a challenging time. It means the world.

Please listen for a message about the unexpected passing of one of our own.

We had an absolutely lovely time chatting with author John Copenhaver about his new book, The Savage Kind (https://bookshop.org/books/the-savage-kind-a-mystery/9781643138091). And about Agatha Christie, of course. This episode is sponsored by http://www.smilebrilliant.com (coupon code AGATHA) and Best Fiends.

We do this every year, and it gets more unwieldy and yet more enjoyable as time goes by. Join us as we fine-tune our rankings of the sixty (!!) Christie novels we've covered thus far. We may even engage in a little horse-trading....

"It's Hallowe'en! It's Hallowe'en! The moon is full and bright! And we shall see what can't be seen on any other night!" Which in a Christie novel means a child murder, lots of velvet trousers, an extended argument between M. Poirot and Mrs. Oliver about form versus function, and an unexpected nod toward the holiday's pagan origins. And SO much more. Come celebrate this spookiest of holidays with us... IF YOU DARE.

Let's not bury the lede here: we just may have gotten ourselves written into a future Anthony Horowitz mystery. We encourage you to check out Anthony's latest offering, A Line to Kill, preferably in an indie bookstore near you. This episode is brought to you by Smile Brilliant (http://www.smilebrilliant.com, coupon code "AGATHA") and Best Fiends.

Tommy and Tuppence are back! But are they better than ever? While the reintroduction of T&T into our lives--along with head injuries, hidden jewels, and (gasp of joy) Albert--is cause for unbridled celebration, this book is by no means a paragon of perfection. Get ready, because we had A LOT to discuss. Oh, and fingers crossed you too are a big Golden Girls fan.... (Sunny Ridge will always be Shady Pines in our book.) This episode is brought to you by: https://www.smilebrilliant.com (coupon code AGATHA) and Best Fiends.

We were honored to host our own event this week at the International Agatha Christie Festival in Torquay, revisiting Christie's first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. (Fair warning: certain plot elements of this book are spoiled in the course of our conversation!) Unfortunately we had to settle for Zooming in from Los Angeles, but as you can hear for yourself, that didn't stop us from having a wonderful time. Special thanks to Tony Medawar, the Festival organizer and moderator of our panel whose voice peppers this episode. We hope to do this again in one year's time... in person!

If you thought two hours was enough for us to talk about Endless Night, you were wrong! Sort of. This short story formed the basis (plot-wise) for that crown jewel of a novel, so in a way we are revisiting it in this episode. But we also get to geek out over a secret unpublished version, too. Hooray! This episode is brought to you by Smile Brilliant (http://www.smilebrilliant.com, coupon code "AGATHA") and Best Fiends.

We're disappointed that our appearance at the Festival has to be virtual (insert pithy Shakespearean insult of choice here, directed COVID's way), but we're thrilled to be appearing at all. For more information about the Festival (including all the other wonderful presenters on tap), please visit: http://www.iacf-uk.org. We look forward to seeing some of you, if only on a screen!

You might want to put on some rain gear before listening to this episode, because it is a bit of a gush fest. Hooray for this late-career Christie gem! Come delight with us in the wonderfully unsettling world of Mr. (Mike) Rogers's neighborhood....

As this is one of Christie's longer short stories--legitimately novella-length--we found a great deal to analyze and discuss. Just think of it as one of the "large miniatures" Suchet fusses over in the adaptation.... No question this is a curious addition to the Poirot canon all around!

Unlike so many late Poirots we've read recently, this one actually features a ton of Poirot (and Ariadne Oliver!), from beginning to end. And while seriously flawed, it gave us a lot to discuss in what turned out to be a rather meandering/digressive episode... even for us. Please visit our Patreon site for bonus content, or just to support us: http://www.patreon.com/allaboutagatha. This episode is sponsored by Smile Brilliant (http://www.smilebrilliant.com, promo code AGATHA) and Best Fiends.

While our favorite Cornish mystery might involve guessing what's in the latest pasty we're devouring, this one was pretty satisfying too! Let's dig in. This episode is sponsored by Smile Brilliant (http://www.smilebrilliant.com, promo code AGATHA) and Best Fiends.

We may as well admit up front that this was not our favorite Christie. But it *is* a Miss Marple novel, and it *does* have a fantastic setting. So all is not lost. Come travel with us to see what dastardly—and potentially confusing?—deeds are afoot... at Bertram's Hotel.

We had as much fun as we usually do unraveling this early Poirot short story--perhaps especially when it came to the adaptation, which is quite a foundational one for the beloved Suchet series.

Though the biggest mystery may be how to spell and pronounce "Caribbean," there is plenty of intrigue to go around in this Miss-Marple-on-holiday story, which at least one Christie scholar deems to be the last proper whodunit that she wrote.

What a great time we had gabbing with this debut author about her recently published (and much buzzed-about) novel... almost as great a time as we had reading it!

This short story is a precursor to The Mystery of the Blue Train, but don't let that put you off! We found much to enjoy--both in the source material and the Suchet adaptation.

Well... they can't all be winners, can they? This (barely-there) Poirot novel is not one of our favorites, we're sorry to say. But as usual, we relish the opportunity to explore and explain why. Because even a lesser Christie is a source of wonder and joy.

We've got Poirot. We've got Hastings. We've got a prince. A lady of mysterious origins. A frozen-in-time bridge tableau! If you need more, you're probably not listening to the right podcast....

We were fortunate enough to sit down with Sarah Pearse, the author of one of this season's hottest (or is that iciest?) thrillers, The Sanatorium. There are lots of connections to be made between her book and Christie, and naturally, we made them all. Enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Best Fiends.

Someone might need to stage an intervention, because the longer we talk about Christie, the more we apparently have to say! We hope you enjoy our super-sized discussion of this intriguing late Christie novel (perhaps the *first* late Christie novel?), during which we wax poetic about all sorts of topics--from the rigors of film acting to the ravages of time. Oh, and Dark Marple, of course.

We were thrilled to speak with Martin Edwards, one of the foremost scholars of detective fiction of the Golden Age. He is also a mystery novelist in his own right, and the current President of the Detection Club. What is the Detection Club, you ask? Take a listen and find out!

It isn't often that we focus as much on an adaptation of a Christie story as the story itself, but if ever there were an episode to do so, it's this one. Join us as we gush over the very first episode of the David Suchet series, including a lengthy discussion as to why this short story was such an excellent choice for the pilot episode of this excellent program.

We had such a fantastic time discussing this late-career Christie gem, as creepy and unsettling as the story may be.... Have you heard about the Pale Horse??

A Miss Marple short story is always cause for celebration, and this one is no exception. Come with us--to St. Mary Mead, of course--where Miss Marple finds herself at the center of a local murder, the solving of which will uncover a long-held secret from the past. In other words: all is exactly as it should be in the Christieverse.... This episode is sponsored by YARN and Best Fiends.

While there is so much we hope will be different about 2021 as compared to 2020, our passion and appetite for Christie do not feature on that long, long list. Happy New Year, dear listeners: we hope you enjoy our leisurely ramble from Meadowbrook to Ramat and back again for this late-career “turducken” of a Christie that we quite enjoyed. Also, how did Kemper manage to shoehorn not one but two clips from Jurassic Park into this episode?! Listen, and be amazed….

Consider this our "Christie for Christmas," an original episode all about what it's like to read Christie in the here and now--in particular, those aspects of the texts that may strike us as seeming "stuck in their time" or otherwise difficult/awkward to negotiate. This is something we've talked about a lot over the years, and we're so grateful to be able to add more voices to the conversation with this episode--YOUR voices, in fact. Thank you again to the listeners who contributed their thoughts; it's our hope that you all get something out of the endeavor. Happy holidays!

This episode completes our review of The Labours of Hercules collection. We also took the opportunity to comment on the somewhat disappointing--but not entirely disastrous--Suchet adaptation.

It's been a while since we've had Mark on our show, but we couldn't pass up the opportunity to fawn over his new book, Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World. This also gave us as good an excuse as any to chatter on about Poirot for an hour or so.... If you feel so inclined (and we wager you will), go to https://bookshop.org to (pre-)order a copy for yourself, if you don't have one already.

We are both HUGE Tana French fans, so we suspect many of you are too. This interview was a joy to record; we hope you enjoy it half as much as we did. And if you haven't yet bought Tana's latest book, The Searcher, or any of the titles mentioned in our conversation, we encourage you to check out https://bookshop.org/, which is a safe and streamlined way to buy books online from independent bookstores in both the U.S. and UK. Happy reading!

We had A LOT to say about this undeniably striking offering in the latter half of the Christie catalogue--not all of it good, but all of it quite heartfelt. Oh, and we also had A LOT to say about the adaptations, too.

Visit our Patreon site at: http://www.patreon.com/allaboutagatha. We hope you enjoy the episode! (If you've been jonesing after LOTS of Angela Lansbury clips, you should be very pleased.)

We're thrilled to have gotten to speak with author/screenwriter/producer Anthony Horowitz, who has brought us so much joy--and not only for the Poirot episodes he adapted in the course of the David Suchet series. Anthony is in the midst of two separate contemporary mystery series, both of which we discussed, with a particular (and spoiler-free!) focus on his most recent novel, Moonflower Murders.

In a perfect world, we could apply Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” drugs campaign referenced in our first story to the questionable art restoration techniques discussed in the second. Alas--and this is probably not a newsflash--but the world we live in is not perfect. (Don’t worry, this will make a lot more sense after you’ve listened to the episode. Enjoy!)

Normally we use this space in our anniversary episode to bemoan the passage of time, but when it comes to 2020 we can all probably agree that we'd like to keep things moving right along, yes? At this point we have quite a roster of titles to discuss, and no shortage of opinions about them. As always, we welcome yours too.

We apparently couldn't stop talking about what Mrs. McGillicuddy saw! (Especially because this is in some ways still an open question by the end of the novel.) Sometimes the flawed Christies give us more food for thought than the superlative gems, and this was definitely one of those times....

We encourage you to take a moment to check out not only our three interviews, but all the offerings available starting Tuesday 15 September via the International Agatha Christie Festival's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbc5NjYWmTw6VYlc2R9G3qw. Enjoy!

It was a pleasure to revisit our dear old Aunt Jane in short story form... especially in a mystery like this one, which features deceptive appearances, gruesome violence, and a particularly snooty Raymond West (which as we all know by now is *really* saying something).

We are truly excited for the opportunity to hear directly from you, our dear listeners, about how you negotiate the "stuck in its time" aspect of reading Christie. Please e-mail us your recorded submissions at allaboutthedame@gmail.com.

Reading this Poirot novel was like revisiting an old friend. So come along with us to the riparian oasis of Nasse House (a.k.a. Greenway), where all our analysis of the Christie canon up to this point will serve us well in figuring out whodunit.

Our dear Hercules is still labo(u)ring his way through the twelve tasks in this standout short story collection, hooray! Appearances can be--and usually are--deceiving in any Christie, but we'd do well to remember this adage in both tales on offer here....

Real talk: this was not our favorite Christie. (That may in fact be a massive understatement.) But we will always cherish the opportunity to discuss any Christie text... even one as problematic as this one.

We have two more enjoyable entries to cover in The Labours of Hercules collection. Join us as we follow Papa Poirot up into the airy heights of the Swiss Alps, and then down into the very deepest and darkest depths, that special place in hell inhabited by [cue organ] the British tabloids!!

We can't say we particularly relished reading this mid-career Christie thriller, but we CAN say we relished *discussing* our reading of this mid-career Christie thriller.... Make sure your tray is secure and your seat's in an upright position, because we're leaving on a jet plane for Morocco and things are about to get real bumpy, real fast!