All About Agatha Christie

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).