The Murder on the Links and The Murder on the Orient Express and The Secret Adversary and And Then There Were None
Agatha Christie has always been one of my go-to re-reads. It’s my literary comfort food. I’ve read and re-read most of what I have in my library, but didn’t feel like cracking the cover of an old favorite once again. My to-read pile didn’t look appealing, either, so what to do? I had a bunch of Audible credits and found a bunch of (free) Christies to experience in a new way. And bonus – they were read by two fun English actors – Hugh Fraser and Dan Stevens. Audible bundled two Christies, so I got two-fers of Fraser and Stevens interpretations, too.
Hugh Fraser played Hercule Poirot’s sidekick Captain Arthur Hastings for years on the Poirot series. So he is more than familiar with the material. Would he be able to tackle the inimitable Belgian detective (and accent)? The answer was absolument. In fact, I had to double-check that David Suchet wasn’t actually voicing Poirot. In The Murder on the Links Poirot and Hastings have been called to France on a case – Poirot has been hired to help a wealthy Frenchman with a difficult matter – unfortunately the man is dead when the detective arrives, so now Poirot must solve two mysteries – not only who murdered the man, but why he was to be consulted in the first place. In The Secret Adversary (Christie’s second published novel) bright young things Prudence “Tuppence” Cowley and Thomas “Tommy” Beresford team up in post WW1 London to solve a mystery involving spies and the sinking of the Lusitania. Fraser does a great job with all of the voices in both novels and manages to make some of the very dated dialogue (T&T are fond of calling each other “old thing” and other phrases of the day) sound plausible.
Two Classic Christies
Dan Stevens’ interpretations of Christie’s classic characters were also impeccable. In The Murder on the Orient Express he does an excellent Poirot, as well as all of the other diverse characters on the infamous train ride. Although I have read (and seen in films) the story multiple times and knew the solution to the mystery, he still made it fun and suspenseful. His reading of And Then There Were None was even more stellar. He does a great job presenting one of Christie’s greatest puzzles – a bunch of strangers are invited to a remote and isolated island for a weekend – and they soon discover that some unknown person is intent on picking them off, one by one. If you’ve seen film interpretations of this story and never read the book it is definitely worth it to discover Christie’s original, inevitable ending.
Fraser has done many more Christies, which I intend to listen to. And Stevens has some other intriguing titles on his list by other authors. Queue ’em up.