All About Agatha Christie

This one gets pretty political! (Because if there's one thing we're missing these days, it's politics....) However, it's at least OLD politics (also known as history), taken from four discrete periods: 1918(ish), 1923, 1936, and 1990. Join us as we two Americans attempt to speak somewhat intelligently about what's been happening across the pond all these years.... Also, this may in fact be our mos...

Back in 1925 Agatha Christie published a short story called "Traitor Hands," which would go on to spawn a successful play and several film adaptations, including the celebrated "Witness for the Prosecution" directed by Billy Wilder, as well as the rather luscious BBC miniseries that aired this past Christmas. Join us as we examine the original story alongside the original play...

Tell people you're reading a Christie novel set on a train--a Poirot, no less--and they'll almost definitely think you're reading Murder on The Orient Express. And you might be! But you might also be reading The Mystery of the Blue Train, which predates its much more famous sibling by a few years.... Climb aboard with us and traverse not just the French countryside but a hybrid whodunit/thriller c...

We're going true-crime for this one… or is that true-hoax? Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction, and Agatha Christie's real-life disappearance for eleven days in 1926 is the perfect encapsulation of this phenomenon. Join us as we unravel the mystery as best we can, including its impact on our beloved author's work and overall career. There's also a movie from the '70s starring Vanessa R...

Put on your thinking cap and solve this bare-bones locked-room logic puzzle with us. Then discard your thinking cap and revel in the theater-filled antics of the much more robust Suchet adaptation. Is "Pearls Before Swine" the best title, EVER, for a play? Undoubtedly. Is Poirot constitutionally capable of taking a proper holiday? Not a chance. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. S...

Do you believe in spirits? Well then M. Poirot believes in YOU. Especially if you happen to find yourself in the vicinity of a murderer willing to kill FOUR people (so... a serial killer) for the slim possibility of a hastily scribbled note passing muster in a probate court as a legitimate will. Join us on one of Dame Agatha's early, pre-Mallowan, archaeological digs.... Hope the sand and heat don...

How do you fit a square peg in a round hole? Awkwardly! In this case the square peg is our beloved M. Poirot, and the round hole is one of Dame Agatha's breezy thrillers from her early years. And yet all is not lost: there is much to love in this episodic novel--and in its adaptation, aired during the final, sepia-tinted season of the Suchet series.... It's 2017 and our resolution is to read as mu...

What better way to celebrate the holiday season than with a very special Christmas-themed episode? Join Poirot as he partakes of a traditional English Christmas involving pudding, mistletoe, a fresh blanket of snow, a jewel thief, a drugging, and a possibly dead child atop said blanket of snow. You know, the usual.... But really, this one is quite lovely. Enjoy, and happy holidays! Hosted by Simpl...

Toot, toot: all aboard the transatlantic steamer "Olympia," where a robbery has occurred. Or has it? Join us as we pick apart this elegant yet unfairly presented short story, and then revel in the maritime hijinks of the Suchet adaptation.... Hope you're not prone to "mal de mer" like poor Captain Hastings. Oh, Hastings. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz...

Ah, finally, our first real classic. A great, inventive, rule-breaking classic. Before there was "Gone Girl," our inimitable Dame Agatha was playing the long narrative con. Plus, we get Poirot in all his masterful gamesmanship, sly as ever. A certain murderer may have wished that mustachioed Belgian had never retired and gone to grow vegetable marrows, but we (and justice seekers everywh...

We all know getting the flu isn't fun, but if you're Hercule Poirot, this dreaded illness has the extra side-effect of unleashing an un-chaperoned Captain Arthur Hastings on the world as replacement detective.... Let's review the hijinks together, shall we? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you a reader who loved "The Man in the Brown Suit" but found it sorely lacking in English country homes? Well, fear not, because this week's episode tackles a Christie novel overflowing with rose gardens, secret passageways, and... chimneys. Does the novel also bear a somewhat suspicious similarity to the plot of our last novel? It does! Join us as we explore this similarity, as well...

Call it what you will: a flat, an apartment, a love-nest, a pad.... A humble abode is hard to find--especially, apparently, if you live in early Twentieth Century London, where a cheap flat just may get you assassinated.... Come discuss this rather silly and shakily constructed short story, which redeems itself with yet another excellent Suchet adaptation. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company....

This is about as close as an Agatha Christie novel gets to an episode of "The Love Boat," and in some ways it gets kind of close! Climb aboard as we journey from England to South Africa with our plucky heroine Anne Beddingfeld, getting embroiled in murder, diamonds, espionage, and of course romance along the way.... Are there all sorts of troubling implications in this rollicking adventu...

Our second short story episode! And while there's more than enough tragedy to go around in the original version--including a(n arguably) coerced confession and incredibly poor doctoring skills, the Suchet adaptation may be more aptly titled The Comedy at Marsdon Manor. So many hijinks! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of per...

So... there is surprisingly little golf in this Poirot novel, given its title, but there are many, many other things: an unfriendly rivalry between detectives; not one, but two romantic subplots; and lots of "continental" flair. Oh my. Come play with us… not in a creepy-haunted-hotel-twins kind of a way, but in a tumbling-vaudevillian-twins kind of way. I.e., goofy, and dopey, but more f...

Our first "interstitial" episode between novels. Brush up on your Nineteenth Century detective novels and clichéd Twentieth Century portrayals of Asian culture. Also, take a closer look with us at the televised adaptation: witness the softening of Poirot from page to screen, and some crucial differences in the Poirot/Hastings relationship. Poor Hastings. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz...

Time for Dame Agatha's very first thriller featuring the delightful detective duo Tommy & Tuppence taking on the devious criminal mastermind "Mr. Brown." Was Tuppence modeled at least somewhat on young Agatha herself? Is "hanging a lantern" an appropriate technique to use in a novel? Do American teenagers really know French that well? All these answers... and more! Hosted b...

In which we dive into the delicious world of David Suchet and Hugh Fraser as Poirot and Hastings. (Shout out to Philip Jackson as Inspector Japp, too.) We also introduce you to our ranking system, which involves an extended discussion about some of the more difficult aspects of enjoying Christie's fiction from a Twenty-First Century perspective.... Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm...

Episode 1! In which we tackle Agatha Christie's first published novel--and first Poirot novel--The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Deep-dive with us as we try to figure out how Christie crafted this cunning "puzzle mystery," and why one woman would regularly ingest coffee, cocoa, tonic, and sleeping powders all in one night.... Come for the kissing cousins, stay for the discussion of Holmes...

A preview of the upcoming podcast. Also: happy 126th birthday, Dame Agatha! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.