A Hercule Poirot Amuse-Bouche: The Mystery of the Baghdad (or is that Spanish?) Chest by Agatha Christie

All About Agatha Christie

Catherine Brobeck & Kemper Donovan

Tv & Film, Books, Film Reviews, Arts

4.7 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2022

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When I found myself adding an instrumental track of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" to an excerpt of this short story I'd been reading aloud, I realized I had passed a milestone of fandom and absurdity I never knew existed till I was on the other side of it. I am happy to be able to share this milestone with you, dear listeners. Enjoy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to all about Agatha, the podcast dedicated to reading and ranking.
0:09.6	Every single mystery novel written by the queen of crime, Dame Agatha Christie, I am
0:14.8	Kemper Donovan, and on this episode, I will be covering a Poirot short story.
0:22.3	We're sort of getting to, for the price of one here, because this story goes by two
0:26.8	different titles. The first is the mystery of the Baghdad chest. The second is the mystery
0:33.2	of the Spanish chest. So what is going on here? Well, let's get right into it with the publication
0:39.4	history for these two stories. The original version, the mystery of the Baghdad chest, which
0:45.6	I will officially be calling the Baghdad version for the duration of this episode.
0:50.8	That version was first published in the UK in the Strand magazine in January 1932.
0:56.9	It wasn't collected in book form in the UK till all the way in 1997, in while the light
1:02.3	lasts and other stories. And then in the US, it was first published in the Ladies Home Journal,
1:08.4	also in January 1932, and then collected in book form just a couple of years later in the
1:13.6	Regatta mystery in 1939. Now the expanded version of the mystery of the Baghdad chest is called
1:21.6	the mystery of the Spanish chest. And I will officially be calling that the Spanish version in
1:27.6	this episode. So the Spanish version was first published in the UK in three installments in
1:33.7	women's illustrated in September and October of 1960, so nearly 30 years after the Baghdad
1:41.0	version. And that was just prior to its being included in the collection, the adventure of the
1:47.2	Christmas pudding and a selection of entrees, which was published later that same year in 1960.
1:55.0	As far as I can tell, the Spanish version was never serialized in the US. It did not appear
2:01.6	in the US in book form until all the way in 1997, in fact, in the Harlequin T set. It's
2:09.2	interesting to note that the Spanish version was nearly the titular story for that UK collection
2:16.8	in which it appeared in 1960. So again, that was the adventure of the Christmas pudding and a
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