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.
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ABC Murders
The A.B.C. Murders is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 6 January 1936 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company on 14 February of the same year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00.
The book features the characters of Hercule Poirot, Arthur Hastings and Chief Inspector Japp. The form of the novel is unusual, combining first- and third-person narrative. This approach was famously pioneered by Charles Dickens in Bleak House, and was tried by Agatha Christie in The Man in the Brown Suit. What is unusual in The A.B.C. Murders is that the third-person narrative is supposedly reconstructed by the first-person narrator, Hastings. This approach shows Christie’s commitment to experimenting with point of view, famously exemplified by The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
The novel was well received in the UK and the US when it was published. One reviewer said it was “a baffler of the first water,” while another remarked on Christie’s ingenuity in the plot.
Adventure Of The Christmas Pudding
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and a Selection of Entrees is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 24 October 1960. It is the only Christie first edition published in the UK that contains stories with both Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, the writer’s two most famous detectives. It retailed in the UK for twelve shillings and sixpence (12/6) and comprises six cases. It was not published in the US although the stories it contains were published in other volumes there.
Plot summaries
1.1 The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, or The Theft of the Royal Ruby
1.2 The Mystery of the Spanish Chest
1.3 The Under Dog
1.4 Four and Twenty Blackbirds
1.5 The Dream
1.6 Greenshaw’s Folly
After The Funeral
After the Funeral is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in March 1953 under the title of Funerals are Fatal and in UK by the Collins Crime Club on 18 May of the same year under Christie’s original title. The US edition retailed at $2.50 and the UK edition at ten shillings and sixpence (10/6).
A 1963 UK paperback issued by Fontana Books changed the title to Murder at the Gallop to tie in with the film version. The book features the author’s Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, but the Murder at the Gallop film adaptation instead featured her amateur sleuth, Miss Marple.
A wealthy man dies at home. His relatives gather after his funeral for the reading of his will, during which his sister states that he was murdered. The next day, she is found murdered. Poirot is called in to solve the mystery.
Read By Hugh Fraser
Appointment With Death
The book features the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and reflects Christie’s experiences travelling in the Middle East with her husband, the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan.
Holidaying in Jerusalem, Poirot overhears Raymond Boynton telling his sister, “You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?” Their stepmother, Mrs Boynton, is a sadistic tyrant who dominates her family. When she is found dead on a trip to Petra, Poirot proposes to solve the case in twenty-four hours, even though he has no way of knowing whether it was murder.
Big Four
The Big Four is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons on 27 January 1927 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. It features Hercule Poirot, Arthur Hastings, and Inspector Japp. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence and the US edition at $2.00.
The structure of the novel is different from other Poirot stories, as it began from twelve short stories (eleven in the US) that had been separately published. This is a tale of international intrigue and espionage, therefore opening up the possibility of more spy fiction from Christie.
Read by Hugh Fraser the actor who portrays Captain Hastings in the TV series.
Black Coffee
Black Coffee is a novelization by the Australian-born writer and opera expert Charles Osborne of the 1930 play of the same name by crime fiction author Agatha Christie.
The novelization was first published in the United Kingdom by Harper Collins on 2 November 1998 and in the United States by St. Martin’s Press on 31 December 1998. It features Christie’s famous literary creation Hercule Poirot, a London-based Belgian private detective.
Until the 1998 publication of the novel, the play on which it was based was one of the least known pieces in the Christie canon.
Read by John Moffatt
By The Pricking Of My Thumbs
While visiting Tommy’s Aunt Ada at Sunny Ridge Nursing Home, Tuppence encounters some odd residents including Mrs. Lancaster who mystifies her with talk about “your poor child” and “something behind the fireplace”.
When Aunt Ada dies a few weeks later, she leaves Tommy and Tuppence a painting featuring a house, which Tuppence is sure she has seen before. This realization leads her on a dangerous adventure involving a missing tombstone, diamond smuggling and a horrible discovery of what Mrs. Lancaster was talking about.
Read by Alex Jennings
Cards On The Table
Read by Hugh Fraser the actor who portrays Captain Hastings in the TV series.
This book features the recurring characters of Hercule Poirot, Colonel Race, Superintendent Battle and the bumbling crime writer Ariadne Oliver, making her first appearance in a Poirot novel. The four detectives and four possible suspects play bridge after dinner with Mr Shaitana. At the end of the evening, Mr Shaitana is discovered murdered. Identifying the murderer, per Mrs Christie, depends wholly on discerning the psychology of the suspects.
This novel was well received at first printing and in later reviews. It was noted for its humour, for the subtlety of the writing, good clueing and tight writing, showing continuing improvement in the author’s writing style in this, her twentieth novel. One later reviewer considered this in the top rung of her novels, and another found it to be most original, with a brilliant surprise ending.
Cat Among The Pigeons
It features Christie’s Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, who makes a very late appearance in the final third of the novel. The emphasis on espionage in the early part of the novel relates it to Christie’s international adventures.
At the start of the summer term at Meadowbank School for Girls, the most prestigious prep school in England, Miss Bulstrode, the popular but aging headmistress, has no reason to believe that the challenges facing her on parent’s day will be more than the occasional irate or inebriated parent. She scarcely listens when Mrs Upjohn, a parent, who just happened to have worked in military intelligence, looks out the window and recognizes on the school campus someone whom she recognised and whose presence at the school apparently surprised but did not alarm her. Mrs Upjohn is still talking but the crucial moment has passed. After Mrs Upjohn leaves, Miss Bulstrode has a sudden feeling that she has missed something important to which she should have paid more attention but then dismissed the notion.
Read by Hugh Fraser
Clocks
The novel is notable for the fact that Poirot never visits any of the crime scenes or speaks to any of the witnesses or suspects. He is challenged to prove his claim that a crime can be solved by the exercise of the intellect alone. The novel marks the return of partial first-person narrative, a technique that Christie had largely abandoned earlier in the Poirot sequence but which she had employed in the previous Ariadne Oliver novel, The Pale Horse (1961). There are two interwoven plots: the mystery Poirot works on from his armchair while the police work on the spot, and a Cold War spy story told in the first person narrative.
Read by Hugh Fraser
Crooked House
Crooked House (published in 1949) is a whodunit novel by Agatha Christie. The action takes place in and near London in the autumn of 1947. Christie has said that this was one of her two favorites of her own works, the other being Ordeal by Innocence.
Plot summary
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The first person narrator is Charles Hayward who, towards the end of the Second World War, occupies some post in Cairo. There he meets Sophia Leonides, who works for the Foreign Office there. They fall in love with each other but put off getting engaged until after the end of the war when they will be reunited back home in England.
When Hayward arrives back home it is only to find an obituary in The Times: Sophia’s grandfather, Aristide Leonides, has died, aged 87. Due to the war, the whole family has been living together under one roof, in a large house near London, among them Leonides’ second wife, whom many in the family dislike and see as nothing more than a gold digger.
When the news is broken that Aristide Leonides has been poisoned, via a diabetic injection, Charles is unwittingly drawn into the case.
Curtain
The novel features Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings in their final appearances in Christie’s works. It is a country house novel, with all the characters and the murder set in one house. Not only does the novel return the characters to the setting of her first, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but it reunites Poirot and Hastings, who last appeared together in Dumb Witness in 1937. It was adapted for television in 2013.
It is the last novel published by Christie before her death, although Sleeping Murder, published posthumously, is her final novel. Neither was the last novel written by Christie.
Dead Man’s Folly
Sir George and Lady Stubbs are holding the village fete in their grounds. it is to be a fete with a difference, for well-known mystery writer Ariadne Oliver is to organise a Murder Hunt as the main event. Every detail is arranged with her customary flair and ingenuity – and the scene is set for Murder. But Ariadne is uncomfortable. Something is not quite right – if only she knew what it was. In desperation she telephones her old friend Hercule Poirot for assistance…
Read by David Suchet
Death Comes As The End
Death Comes as the End is a historical mystery novel by Agatha Christie, it is the only one of Christie’s novels not to be set in the 20th century, and – unusually for her – also features no European characters. Instead, the novel is set in Thebes in 2000 BC, a setting for which Christie gained an appreciation of while working with her archaeologist husband, Sir Max Mallowan in the Middle East. The novel is notable for its very high number of deaths and is comparable to And Then There Were None from this standpoint. It is also the first full-length novel combining historical fiction and the whodunit/detective story, a genre which would later come to be called the historical whodunit.[3][4][5]
The suggestion to base the story in ancient Egypt came from noted Egyptologist and family friend Stephen Glanville. He also assisted Christie with details of daily household life in Egypt 4000 years ago. In addition he made forceful suggestions to Christie to change the ending of the book. This she did but regretted the fact afterwards, feeling that her (unpublished) ending was better. The novel is based on some real letters, translated by egyptologist Battiscombe Gunn, from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom period from a man called Heqanakhte to his family, complaining about their behavior and treatment of his concubine.[6]
It is one of only four Christie novels to have not received an adaptation of any kind (such as screen, stage or radio) and one of only five of her novels to have not received a screen adaptation, the others being Destination Unknown, Passenger to Frankfurt, Postern of Fate and Crooked House.
Christie uses a theme for her chapter titles, as she did for many of her novels, in this case the Egyptian agricultural calendar.
Read by Amelia Fox
Death in the clouds
Death in the Clouds is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company on 10 March 1935 under the title of Death in the Air[1] and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in the July of the same year under Christie’s original title.[2] The US edition retailed at $2.00[1] and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6).[2] The book features the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and Chief Inspector Japp.
Death on the Nile
Read by David Suchet, the actor that played Hercule Poirot in the British TV series.
Death on the Nile is a book of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 1 November 1937 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence(7/6) and the US edition at $2.00. The full length novel was preceded (1934) by a short story with the same title, but with Parker Pyne as the detective. The details of the short story’s plot are substantially different, tho the settings and some of the characters are very similar.
The book features the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The action takes place in Egypt, mostly on the Nile River.
Dumb Witness
Read by Hugh Fraser the actor who portrays Captain Hastings in the TV series.
The book features the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and is narrated by his friend Arthur Hastings. One novel published after this one features Hastings as narrator, 1975’s Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case.
Elephants Can Remember
Elephants Can Remember is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in 1972.
It features her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and the recurring character Ariadne Oliver. This was the last Christie novel to feature either character, although in terms of publication it was succeeded by Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, which had been written in the early 1940s but published last. The novel is notable for its concentration on memory and oral testimony.
At a literary luncheon, Mrs Burton-Cox, to whose son Celia Ravenscroft is engaged, approaches Mrs Ariadne Oliver, a school friend of the late Margaret Ravenscroft and godmother to her daughter. Mrs Burton-Cox asks Mrs Oliver what she believes is an important question: which of Celia’s parents was the murderer, and which was murdered?
Read by Hugh Fraser
Evil Under The Sun
In this novel, Agatha Christie does what she does best: assembles a group of diverse characters on holiday, has one of them murdered, and provides the rest with plenty of opportunity and motive to have committed the crime.
Arlena Marshall is a beautiful woman known for her affairs with men, both before and during her marriage. While on holiday at the Jolly Roger Hotel on England’s South Coast, she openly cavorts with Patrick Redfern while her husband and his wife watch helplessly. Tragedy is inevitable and few are surprised when Arlena is murdered.
What sets Christie apart from other mystery writers is the wonderful skill she exhibits with characterizations. This novel, one of her best in my opinion, is complete with many well-developed ones which make for a believable crime. Miss Rosamund Darnley, a talented dress designer, and Mr. and Mrs. Odell Gardener, the outspoken American woman and her long-suffering husband, are just a few of the many who fill this story. And of course, the famous detective Hercule Poirot also happens to be on holiday here at the time of the murder. Everybody is a suspect as voodoo practices, drug-smuggling, religious mania, and two murders from the past add intrigue.
Five Little Pigs
The book features Hercule Poirot. The novel is notable as a rigorous attempt to demonstrate Poirot’s repeatedly stated contention that it is possible to solve a mystery purely by reflecting upon the testimony of the participants, and without access to the scene of the crime. This was the last novel of an especially prolific phase of Christie’s work on Poirot. She published thirteen Poirot novels between 1935 and 1942 out of a total of eighteen novels in that period. By contrast, she published only two Poirot novels in the next eight years, indicating the possibility that she was experiencing some frustration with her most popular character. Five Little Pigs is unusual in the way that the same events are retold from several standpoints.
Hallowe’en Party
The novel features Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and the mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver. A girl at a Hallowe’en party with Ariadne Oliver in attendance, claims she witnessed a murder, which at the time as she was so young, she had not realized was a murder. Soon, the girl is found murdered. Oliver calls in Poirot to find the cause of this and the next murder. This book was dedicated to P.G. Wodehouse.
During the preparation of a Hallowe’en party in Woodleigh Common, thirteen-year-old Joyce Reynolds tells everyone, including Ariadne Oliver, that she saw a murder once, but only recently realised that it was a murder that she had seen. At the end of the party, Joyce is found drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. Mrs Oliver is visiting her friend Judith Butler, whose daughter Miranda (age 12) is too ill to attend the party. With Mrs Oliver’s help, Poirot must unmask the real evil of the night.
Read by Hugh Fraser
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
When multi-millionaire Simeon Lee unexpectedly invites his family to gather at his home for Christmas, the gesture is met with suspicion by many of the guests. Simeon is not given to family sentiment, and not all of the family are on good terms with one another. To make things worse, he has invited the black sheep of the family, Harry, and Simeon’s granddaughter, Pilar, whom none of them has ever met before. Simeon is intent on playing a sadistic game with his family’s emotions. An unexpected guest – Stephen Farr, son of Simeon Lee’s former partner in the diamond mines – means that the house is full of potential suspects when the game turns deadly.
Hickory Dickory Dock
It features her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The novel is notable for featuring Poirot’s efficient secretary, Miss Felicity Lemon, who had previously only appeared in the Poirot short stories.
An outbreak of apparent kleptomania at a student hostel arouses Hercule Poirot’s interest when he sees the bizarre list of stolen and vandalized items. These include a stethoscope, some light bulbs, some old flannel trousers, a box of chocolates, a slashed rucksack, some boracic powder and a diamond ring later found in a bowl of a soup – he congratulates the warden, Mrs Hubbard, on a ‘unique and beautiful problem’.
Read by Hugh Fraser
Hollow
On the morning that he and his downtrodden wife, Gerda, are due to travel down to the country to weekend with friends, Dr John Christow, a successful physician and leading researcher, allows his little daughter to tell his fortune with cards. When the death card is drawn, he pays no attention, but the appearance of an old flame at The Hollow seems to be the final link in a chain of fatal circumstances.
Labours Of Hercules
Poirot sets himself a challenge before he retires – to solve 12 cases which correspond with the labours of his classical Greek namesake! In appearance Hercule Poirot hardly resembled an ancient Greek hero. Yet — reasoned the detective — like Hercules he had been responsible for ridding society of some of its most unpleasant monsters. So, in the period leading up to his retirement, Poirot made up his mind to accept just twelve more cases: his self-imposed ‘Labours’. Each would go down in the annals of crime as a heroic feat of deduction.
Read by Hugh Fraser
Lord Edgware Dies
Read by Hugh Fraser the actor who portrays Captain Hastings in the TV series.
Lord Edgware Dies is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in September 1933 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year under the title of Thirteen at Dinner. Before its book publication, the novel was serialised in six issues (March–August 1933) of The American Magazine as13 For Dinner.
The novel features Hercule Poirot, Arthur Hastings and Chief Inspector Japp. An American actress married to Lord Edgware asks Poirot to aid her in getting a divorce from her husband. Poirot agrees to help her, meeting her husband. That evening, the actress is seen at a dinner with thirteen guests, which has an associated superstition. By the next morning Lord Edgware and another American actress are found murdered, each at their own homes. Poirot investigates.
The novel was well received at publication, in both London and New York, noting the clue that came from the chance remark of a stranger, calling it ingenious. A later review called it clever and unusual.
Man In The Brown Suit
Like The Secret Adversary, The Man in the Brown Suit is less a novel of pure detection than it is a thriller typical of its period. It follows the adventures of Anne Beddingfeld as she becomes involved in a world of diamond thieves, murderers, and political intrigue in this tale set in exotic South Africa. Colonel Race makes his first appearance in the novel; he later appears in Cards on the Table,Sparkling Cyanide, and Death on the Nile.
Read by Emilia Fox
Monogram Murders
“I’m a dead woman, or I shall be soon . . .”
Hercule Poirot’s quiet supper in a London coffeehouse is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered. Though terrified, she begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done. Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at a London Hotel have been murdered, and a monogrammed cuff link has been placed in each one’s mouth. Could there be a connection with the frightened woman? While Poirot struggles to put together the bizarre pieces of the puzzle, the murderer prepares another hotel bedroom for a fourth victim.
Since the publication of her first novel in 1920, more than two billion copies of Agatha Christie’s books have been sold around the globe. Now, for the first time ever, the guardians of her legacy have approved a brand-new novel featuring Dame Agatha’s most beloved creation, Hercule Poirot.
Internationally bestselling author Sophie Hannah breathes new life into the incomparable detective. In this thrilling tale, Poirot plunges into a mystery set in 1920s London—a diabolically clever puzzle that will test his brilliant skills and baffle and delight longtime Christie fans and new generations of readers discovering him for the first time. Authorized by Christie’s family, and featuring the most iconic detective of all time, this instant Christie classic is sure to be celebrated by mystery lovers the world over.
Read by Julian Rhind-Tutt
Mrs McGinty’s Dead
Hercule Poirot is feeling bored, so he is delighted when he is visited by his old friend Superintendent Spence of the Kilchester Police. Spence has recently been in charge of murder case, an old charwoman, Mrs McGinty, has been brutally bludgeoned to death. Her lodger, James Bentley, has been convicted of her murder and is due to hang. But Spence is convinced Bentley didn’t do it, and he wants Poirot to find out who did.
So Poirot goes to stay in the village of Broadhinny, where the grizzly deed was done, and he soon begins to uncover reasons why other people might have wanted Mrs McGinty dead. While striving to discover the real murderer, he also has to cope with the appalling conditions at the truly terrible ‘guest house’ he is staying at. The Summerhayes, whose house it is, have no idea how to run a guest house, nor even how to prepare an edible meal.
The scenes where Poirot’s sufferings at the Summerhayes’s horrible guest house are described are among the funniest in the book, which is replete with humour. There are many interesting characters, especially the scatty but charming Maureen Summerhayes, whom Poirot likes in spite of her atrocious cooking. The character of the convicted murderer Jame Bentley is particularly good, he is utterly unprepossessing, which makes Poirot all the more determined to prove him innocent.
Read by Hugh Fraser
Murder In Mesopotamia
Murder in Mesopotamia is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 6 July 1936 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence(7/6) and the US edition at $2.00.
The book features Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The novel is set at an archaeological excavation in Iraq, and descriptive details derive from the author’s visit to the Royal Cemetery at Ur where she met her husband, Sir Max Mallowan, and other British archaeologists.
Read by Anna Massey
Murder Is Easy
On her way to Scotland Yard to report several murders in her village, an elderly woman encounters retired policeman Luke Fitzwilliam. He dismisses her ravings about the murderer finding it easy to kill, as long as no one knows who he is–until two more killings occur, one of which is the old lady’s. Previously titled Easy to Kill.
Read by Hugh Fraser
Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in June 1926 in the United Kingdom.
Read by Hugh Fraser the actor who portrays Captain Hastings in the TV series.
Poirot retires to a village near the home of a friend, Roger Ackroyd, to pursue a project to perfect vegetable marrows. Soon after, Ackroyd is murdered and Poirot must come out of retirement to solve the case.
Murder on the Links
The Murder on the Links is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK in 1923.
The story takes place in northern France, giving Poirot a hostile competitor from the Paris Sûreté. Poirot’s long memory for past or similar crimes proves useful in resolving the crimes. The book is notable for a subplot in which Hastings falls in love, a development “greatly desired on Agatha’s part… parcelling off Hastings to wedded bliss in the Argentine.”
Read by Jonathan Oliver
Murder on the Orient Express
Read by David Suchet, the actor that played Hercule Poirot in the British TV series.
Murder on the Orient Express is a detective novel by Agatha Christie featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 1 January 1934. In the United States, it was published on 28 February 1934, under the title of Murder in the Calais Coach, by Dodd, Mead and Company. The U.K. edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the U.S. edition at $2.00.
The U.S. title of Murder in the Calais Coach was used to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel Stamboul Train which had been published in the United States as Orient Express.
Mysterious Affair At Styles
The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a detective novel by British writer Agatha Christie. It was written in the middle of the First World War, in 1916, and first published by John Lane in the United States in October 1920 and in the United Kingdom by The Bodley Head (John Lane’s UK company) on 21 January 1921.
Styles was Christie’s first published novel. It introduced Hercule Poirot, Inspector (later, Chief Inspector) Japp, and Arthur Hastings. Poirot, a Belgian refugee of the Great War, is settling in England near the home of Emily Inglethorp, who helped him to his new life. His friend Hastings arrives as a guest at her home. When the woman is killed, Poirot uses his detective skills to solve the mystery.
The book includes maps of the house, the murder scene, and a drawing of a fragment of a will. The true first publication of the novel was as a weekly serial in The Times, including the maps of the house and other illustrations included in the book. This novel was one of the first ten books published by Penguin Books when it began in 1935.
Read by David Suchet
Mystery Of The Blue Train
The Mystery of the Blue Train is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by William Collins & Sons on 29 March 1928 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence and the US edition at $2.00. The book features her detective Hercule Poirot.
Poirot boards Le Train Bleu, bound for the French Riviera. So does Katherine Grey, who is having her first winter out of England, after recently receiving a relatively large inheritance. On board the train Grey meets Ruth Kettering, an American heiress leaving her unhappy marriage to meet her lover. The next morning, though, Ruth is found dead in her compartment, a victim of strangulation. The famous ruby, “Heart of Fire”, which had recently been given to Ruth by her father, is discovered to be missing.
Read by Hugh Fraser the actor who portrays Captain Hastings in the TV series.
N Or M
After the outbreak of the Second World War and many years after they worked for British intelligence, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford feel useless and sidelined. When Tommy alone is approached to go undercover once more, however, Tuppence decides to join him on his mission whether invited or not. Through good sleuthing she learns where he is to be sent and actually arrives there before him. They begin a search for German fifth columnists. Another British agent that was following these Germans left a cryptic message on his deathbed: “N or M. Song Susie”. Grant knew that “Song Susie” stood for Sans Souci, a hotel in (fictional) seaside Leahampton, based on Bournemouth; “N” and “M” were two German spies, one male and one female. Tommy is to go to Sans Soucito investigate whether N, M or both are at the hotel and to figure out their identities.
Both N and M’s identities are revealed at the end of the book; “N” is a top German spy—who is shot by British intelligence at the book’s conclusion as he threatens Tuppence’s life—and “M” is his female co-conspirator.
Read by James Warwick
One Two Buckle My Shoe
This is one of several of Christie’s crime fiction novels to feature both the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, and Chief Inspector Japp. This is Japp’s final novel appearance. It also bears a stark resemblance with one of Christie’s previous novels, Three Act Tragedy which features similar elements with respect to the denouement and also the plot on the whole.
When Hercule Poirot’s own dentist, Henry Morley, is found dead from a gunshot wound, the official verdict is that he has killed himself; a verdict apparently supported when it appears that he has given one of his patients a fatal overdose of anesthetic. Poirot suspects, however, that there is more to the case than at first appears, and soon events confirm his worst suspicions.
Ordeal By Innocence
Feeling a sense of duty to the Argyles, Calgary is surprised when his revelation has a disturbing effect on the family – it means one of the family is a murderer! Read by Hugh Fraser who plays Captain Hastings in the popular TV series. Dr. Arthur Calgary takes a ferry across the Rubicon River to Sunny Point, the home of the Argyle family. A year before, the matriarch of the family was murdered and a son, Jack, was convicted and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. Throughout the trial Jack had maintained his innocence, claiming he was hitchhiking on the night of the murder and he had been picked up by a middle-aged man in a dark car. Unable to locate this mystery man the police viewed Jack’s as a lie. Calgary was the stranger in question, but he arrives to late for Jack – who succumbs to pneumonia after serving just six months of his sentence. Feeling a sense of duty to the Argyles, Calgary is surprised when his revelation has a disturbing effect on the family – it means
one of the family is a murderer!
Pale Horse
The novel features her novelist detective Ariadne Oliver as a minor character, and reflects in tone the supernatural novels of Dennis Wheatley who was then at the height of his popularity. The Pale Horse is mentioned in Revelation 6:8, where it is ridden by Death.
A dying woman, Mrs Davis, gives her last confession to Father Gorman, a Catholic priest, but along with her confession she gives him a list of names and a terrible secret. Before he can take action, however, he is struck dead in the fog. As the police begin to investigate, a young hero begins to piece together evidence that sets him upon a converging path.
Read by Hugh Fraser
Partners In Crime
Tommy and Tuppence Beresford were restless for adventure, so when they were asked to take over Blunt’s International Detective Agency, they leapt at the chance.
After their triumphant recovery of a pink pearl, intriguing cases kept on coming their way: a stabbing on Sunningdale golf course; cryptic messages in the personal columns of newspapers; and even a box of poisoned chocolates.
Read by James Warwick
Passenger To Frankfurt
When a bored diplomat is approached in a bleak airport by a woman whose life is in danger, he agrees in a moment of weakness to lend her his passport and boarding ticket. Suddenly, Stafford Nye’s own life is on the line, for he has unwittingly entered a web of international intrigue, from which the only escape is to outwit the power-crazed Countess von Waldsausen who is hell-bent on world domination through the manipulation and arming of the planet’s youth, which brings with it what promises to be a resurgence of Nazi domination.
The book is noted for its ambiguous ending, unusual for Agatha Christie.
Read by Hugh Fraser
Peril at End House
Read by Hugh Fraser the actor who portrays Captain Hastings in the TV series.
Peril at End House is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie first published in the US by the Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1932 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in March of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6).
The book features Christie’s famous character Hercule Poirot, as well as Arthur Hastings and Chief Inspector Japp, and is the sixth novel featuring Poirot. Poirot and Hastings vacation in Cornwall, meeting young Magdala “Nick” Buckley and her friends. He is persuaded that someone is out to kill her. They meet all of her friends at her home called End House. Though he aims to protect Nick, a murder happens provoking Poirot to mount a serious investigation.
The novel was well received when first published, with the plot remarked as unusually ingenious and diabolically clever by reviewers. Writing in 1990, Robert Barnard found it cunning, but not one of Christie’s very best. It has been adapted to stage, radio, film, television, graphic novel, and a computer game, and translated to many other languages as a book.
Poirot Investigates
Poirot Investigates is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK.
1.01 The Adventure of the Western Star
1.02 The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor
1.03 The Adventure of the Cheap Flat
1.04 The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge
1.05 The Million Dollar Bond Robbery
1.06 The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb
1.07 The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan
1.08 The Kidnapped Prime Minister
1.09 The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim
1.10 The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman
1.11 The Case of the Missing Will
Poirot’s Early Cases
Poirot’s Early Cases is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by Collins Crime Club in September 1974.
In the collection, Christie charts some of the cases from Hercule Poirot’s early career, before he was internationally renowned as a detective. All the stories had first been published in periodicals between 1923 and 1935.
1.01 The Affair at the Victory Ball
1.02 The Adventure of the Clapham Cook
1.03 The Cornish Mystery
1.04 The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly
1.05 The Double Clue
1.06 The King of Clubs
1.07 The Lemesurier Inheritance
1.08 The Lost Mine
1.09 The Plymouth Express
1.10 The Chocolate Box
1.11 The Submarine Plans
1.12 The Third Floor Flat
1.13 Double Sin
1.14 The Market Basing Mystery
1.15 Wasps’ Nest
1.16 The Veiled Lady
1.17 Problem at Sea
1.18 How Does Your Garden Grow?
Postern Of Fate
Now in their seventies (though the author never states their age clearly), Tommy and Tuppence move to a quiet English village, looking forward to a peaceful retirement. But, as they soon discover, their rambling old house holds secrets. Who is Mary Jordan? And why has someone left a code message in an old book about her ‘unnatural’ death? Once more, ingenuity and insight are called for as they are drawn into old mysteries and new dangers.
Read by Bill Wallis
Sad Cypress
The novel is notable for being the first novel in the Poirot series set at least partly in the courtroom, with lawyers and witnesses exposing the facts underlying Poirot’s solution to the crimes. The title is drawn from a song in Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night.
The novel was well received, even by her usual critic, who said “Elegiac, more emotionally involving than is usual in Christie, but the ingenuity and superb clueing put it among the very best of the classic titles.” Another reviewer remarked “it is economically written, the clues are placed before the reader with impeccable fairness, the red herrings are deftly laid and the solution will cause many readers to kick themselves.”
Secret Adversary
The book introduces the characters of Tommy and Tuppence who feature in three other Christie novels and one collection of short stories; the five Tommy and Tuppence books span Agatha Christie’s writing career. The Great War is over, and jobs are scarce. Tommy Beresford and Prudence “Tuppence” Cowley meet and agree to start their own business as The Young Adventurers. They are hired for a job that leads them both to many dangerous situations, meeting allies as well, including an American millionaire in search of his cousin.
Read by Alex Jennings
Secret Of Chimneys
It introduces the characters of Superintendent Battleand Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent. At the request of George Lomax, Lord Caterham reluctantly agrees to host a weekend party at his home, Chimneys. A murder occurs in the house, beginning a week of fast-paced events with police among the guests.
The novel was well received at first publication, described as more than a murder mystery, as it is a treasure hunt. Later reviews found it a first class romp and one of the author’s best early thrillers. The most recent review says the novel requires a hefty suspension of disbelief. The later reviewers note that descriptions of characters use the terminology of the times in which it was written, and might be considered racist decades later.
Read by Hugh Fraser
Seven Dials Mystery
Gerry Wade had proved himself to be a champion sleeper; so the other house guests decided to play a practical joke on him. Eight alarm clocks were set to go off, one after the other, starting at 6.30 a.m. But when morning arrived, one clock was missing and the prank had backfired with tragic consequences.
Read by Emilia Fox
Sittaford Mystery
The Sittaford Mystery is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1931 under the title of The Murder at Hazelmoor and in UK by the Collins Crime Club on 7 September of the same year under Christie’s original title. It is the first Christie novel to be given a different title for the US market. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6).
Mrs Willett and her daughter host an evening of “table-turning” (a séance) on a snowy winter’s evening in Dartmoor. The spirit tells them that Captain Trevelyan is dead. The roads being impassible to vehicles, Major Burnaby announces his intention to go to the village on foot to check on his friend, where he appears to find the prediction has come true. Emily Trefusis, engaged to Trevelyan’s nephew, uncovers the mystery along with the police.
The novel was well-received, with praise for the character Miss Emily Trefusis. The references to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, alive when the book was published, and the elements of the setting that hearken to The Hound of the Baskervilles (published in 1902) were also noted and appreciated.
Read by Nathaniel Parker
Sparkling Cyanide
Sparkling Cyanide is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1945 under the title of Remembered Death and in UK by the Collins Crime Club in the December of the same year under Christie’s original title. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at eight shillings and sixpence (8/6 – 42½p).
The novel features the recurring character of Colonel Race for his last appearance to solve the mysterious deaths of a married couple, exactly one year apart. The plot of this novel expands the plot of a short story, Yellow Iris.
Read by Hugh Fraser
Taken at the Flood
When Rosaleen Cloade comes to sleepy Warmsley Vale to collect on her
late spouse’s sizable inheritance, the Cloade family — who all rely
in various ways on the funds from their dear departed Uncle Gordon —
have other plans for the money.
This classic Christie, originally published as THERE IS A TIDE, opens
with Hercule Poirot in a London club, where he overhears a story that
later helps to sort out a tangled murder case. Hugh Fraser, known to
PBS “Mystery” fans in the role of Poirot’s sidekick, Captain Hastings,
is elegant in the voices of the gentry–sowing bewilderment and an undercurrent of guilt to keep readers wondering to the end just who may be the villains.
Fraser is equally deft in portraying the village folk and the Irish
gate-crashers who married into the Cloade family and won the family
fortune when a bomb in the London Blitz killed patriarch Gordon Cloade.
They Came To Baghdad
The book was inspired by Christie’s own trips to Baghdad with her second husband, archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, and is also one of few Christie novels belonging to the action and spy fiction genres, rather than to mysteries and whodunnits.
A secret summit of superpowers is to be held in Baghdad, but it is no longer secret. A shadowy group (which is both anti-Communist and anti-Capitalist) is plotting to sabotage the event. Things get complicated when enthusiastic young “adventurer” Victoria Jones discovers a dying secret British agent – Henry “Fakir” Carmichael – in her hotel room. His last words – “Lucifer…Basrah…Lefarge” – propel her into investigation. “Lucifer” refers to the mastermind, Victoria’s false lover Edward, who is behind the plot. “Basrah” is thecity where Carmichael saw Edward and recognised him as an enemy. “Lefarge” turns out to actually be “Defarge” and is a reference to a Charles Dickens character; it is an allusion to the fact that the name of a vital witness has been stitched into a scarf.
Read by Emilia Fox
Third Girl
It features her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and the recurring character Ariadne Oliver. The novel is notable for being the first in many years in which Poirot is present from beginning to end. It is uncommon in that the investigation includes discovering the first crime, which happens comparatively late in the novel.
Read by Hugh Fraser
Three Act Tragedy
Three Act Tragedy is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie first published in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1934 under the title Murder in Three Acts and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in January 1935 under Christie’s original title. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence(7/6).
The book features Hercule Poirot, supported by his friend Mr Satterthwaite, and is the one book in which Satterthwaite collaborates with Poirot. Satterthwaite previously appeared in the stories featuring Harley Quin, in particular those collected in The Mysterious Mr Quin(1930). The novel was adapted for television twice, first in 1986 titled Murder in Three Acts, and again in 2010 as Three Act Tragedy.
Towards Zero
Lady Tressilian invites her ward for his annual visit at Gull’s Point. He insists on bringing both his former wife and his present wife, though Lady Tressilian finds this awkward. Her old friend dies, and Superintendent Battle and his nephew are called in. The book is the last to feature her recurring character of Superintendent Battle.
Read by Hugh Fraser
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans
Was it a misstep that sent a handsome stranger plummeting to his death from a cliff? Or something more sinister? Fun-loving adventurers Bobby Jones and Frances Derwent’s suspicions are certainly roused–espeically since the man’s dying words were so peculiar: Why didn’t the ask Evans? Bobby and Frances would love to know. Unfortunately, asking the wrong people has sent the amateur sleuths running for their lives–on a wild and deadly pursuit tod discover who Evans is, what it was he wasn’t asked, and why the mysterious inquiry has put their own lives in mortal danger…
Read by Emilia Fox
British Comics 