All About Agatha (christie)

We had such a fantastic time discussing this late-career Christie gem, as creepy and unsettling as the story may be.... Beware the Pale Horse! This episode is sponsored by YARN and Best Fiends.

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!!