cbr11bingo – Classics
Hope this counts! I have a hard time keeping my attention on most of the classics, so I looked for a full-cast audio of something fairly light, and this one was quickly available on Overdrive.
In 2015, the BBC rereleased these three plays of Christie’s that were thought to be lost. The audio also includes an interview with the author, the cast of the Mouse Trap, and with the lone radio actor who was still alive when the collection was published. The plays in the collection are:
Butter in a Lordly Dish, written for the radio in 1948, concerning the recent hanging of a young man convicted of killing several women, and the philandering prosector on his case
Personal Call, also written for the radio in 1960, about a man who begins receiving calls from his dead first wife
and Murder at the Mews, adapted from her own short story and the only one to feature her famous detective Poirot, about the apparent suicide of a young woman on Guy Fawkes Day.
The mysteries were all very pleasant to listen to with very good performances by the cast. The mysteries themselves were a bit predictable, but still fun to take the journey. All casts featured a lot of female characters which was nice (though certainly fell to some of the gender stereotyping of the era), and the sound effects enhanced the mood. I didn’t find the interviews particularly interesting but I think fans of Christie’s would like them very much. I don’t anticipate I’ll be barreling through her body of work anytime soon, but I appreciated enjoying a small taste of the works that have inspired so many modern mysteries.