The Agatha Christie Stories To Listen To Now
Struggling to settle into a novel?
Why not download one by the Queen of Crime.
Whether I am sifting precious flour, reorganising the bookshelves or simply staring into space, audiobooks are my preferred way to absorb stories right now.
Set in another time, her novels permit gentle escapism and absorption, making them the perfect soundtrack to getting on with something else.
The original BBC Radio dramatisations are my choice, downloaded from Audible they are the ideal company for early morning walks or pottering about the garden.
As author and journalist Scarlett Curtis recently wrote in the Sunday Times Style, there is almost nothing better than a cosy murder novel being read to you.
The one that’s apt for lockdown…
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
A fitting place to start, this novel introduces egg-shaped Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot and his little grey cell methodology. In this affair he teams up with the amiable Captain Hastings for the first time, to solve a seemingly-traditional country house murder.
Despite the assumed safety of the quiet lanes surrounding Styles Court, events are set in the summer of 1916, as World War I rages across the channel.
With Hastings recently invalided home from the front, the house is on ‘a real war footing’. Dinner has been replaced by a more spartan supper and ornate daughters of the gentry usually found lounging fireside, have discarded their pearls to join the Land Girls.
‘It seemed almost impossible to believe that not all that far away a great war was being fought.’
Whilst tidying your bookshelves…
The Body in the Library
‘The library was a little like Colonel Bantry; large and shabby and untidy. But across the moth-eaten bearskin was sprawled the figure of a girl.’
Featuring Christie’s other famed sleuth, white-haired busybody Miss Marple, this glorious mystery opens inside the wood-panelled grandeur of Gossington Hall.
From there we journey to ‘Danemouth’ - a seaside town no doubt modelled on Torquay, where Christie was born - and the platinum glamour of the dancers at the Majestic Hotel.
Whilst pottering in the garden…
Dead Man’s Folly
Dead Man’s Folly sees the return of well-known crime writer Ariadne Oliver. Summoning Poirot to a country house, Oliver has a lingering suspicion that something is amiss with the murder game she has been asked to organise for the village fete.
The delightful Georgian setting was doubtless inspired by Christie’s own Devon home, Greenway House. Inside its peaceful walls, villagers inspect marmalade amongst the perennials and enjoy a spot of clock golf on lawn, blithely unaware that a girl lies dead in the boat house.
Whilst preparing dinner…
The Herb of Death
‘I called it sage and onions’ begins Dolly Bantry in The Thirteen Problems. Casting aside a bulb catalogue, she begins an intriguing tale to regale her dinner party guests.
Foxgloves growing in around the herb garden are mistakenly picked alongside sage, resulting in the death of one unfortunate member of the household. A chance accident by a careless cook perhaps?
Alongside the other inhabitants of St Mary Mead, Miss Marple leads the charge to guess ‘whodunnit’.
When sunbathing…
A Caribbean Mystery
Escape to paradise on the isle of St Honoré, where Miss Marple is attempting to soothe her rheumatism in the Caribbean sun.
The only case which sees the elderly lady travel abroad, the BBC dramatisation echoes with steel drums and distant waves.
A fellow guest begins a yarn about a strange coincidence involving a death, whereupon the old gentleman loses track….only to be found dead the next day. A case of too much Planter’s Punch it seems, until the old lady starts snooping.
Whilst sipping cocktails…
The Mystery of the Blue Train
The golden-age glamour of Murder on the Orient Express is widely-known. But, with a missing vanity case containing rubies, a nair-do-well Count and a hapless english family enjoying riotous parties at their Riviera villa, The Blue Train, is, for me, equally wonderful.
The dramatisation that will have you wanting to don a smoking jacket and sip a sundowners before le train has even reached Nice.
Hope that gives you a little something to enjoy this weekend. And in the words of the ever-wise and devout Hercule Poirot:
‘Trust the train Mademoiselle, for it is Le Bon Dieu who drives it.’
Happy listening x
