Welcome to All About Agatha, the podcast dedicated to reading and ranking every

single mystery novel written by the Queen of Crime, Dame Agda Christie, I'm Kemper Donovan.

And this week, we are discussing

Catherine's favorite detective within the Greater Christieverse,

Parker Pine Heart Specialist.

Catherine, how excited are you right now?

He's a specialist of my heart.

Causes me like a little angina. He's your angina specialist.

So the short story we're discussing this week is the case of the city clerk

and it so happens that this is the Parker Pine story that was next within the collection

we're working our way through, more on that in a moment, but this is an extremely happy coincidence

because we'd like to do a special holiday themed episode at the end of each year here on this

podcast and our first year we covered the adventure of the Christmas pudding with our dear

Monsieur Poirot and last year we endured a Christmas tragedy with our equally dear Miss Marple.

And this year we find ourselves with none other than Mr. Parker Pine in a story that I would argue

is as heartwarming for our mercenary little heart specialist as any

Christmas theme fable out there a Christmas Carol the gift of the magi or what have

you so with that in mind Catherine why don't you tell us a little bit about the

publication history of this one. Why wait? Let's just jump right in.

Well, it was first published in the US as The Clerk Who Wanted Excitement in August of

1932 in Cosmo and then in the UK as the 10

pound adventure in November of the same year in Strand magazine and I have to say

...