Welcome to all about Agatha, the podcast dedicated to reading and ranking every single mystery novel written by the queen of crime, Dame Agatha Christie.

I am Kemper Donovan, and in this episode we will be discussing the final novel of Agatha Christie's to be published, Sleeping Murder.

Do not adjust your screens listeners. I do realize that we have not yet covered the penultimate novel of Agatha Christie's to be published. That of course would be curtain, but per the wishes of my dear co host, Catherine Brobeck, who passed away at the end of last year.

We will be covering Sleeping Murder first and curtain last. So for these final two Agatha Christie novels, we are going out of publication order.

It's going to be okay. I promise. I do also realize I'm mainly speaking to myself when I say that.

I am so thrilled and honored to be joined in the second part of this episode by Tony Meadower, a Christie scholar who knows his stuff and then some.

So Tony will be joining me for the rankings portion of the episode.

But for now you are all stuck with me and I'm going to open as I tend to do these days with some male bag items.

So in our posturing of fate episode, Caroline Crampton and I were a bit befuddled by this phrase in the Times's review of that novel upon publication.

She skims like a bird and one of you reached out to say the following.

Hi, Kemper. The answer to the riddle is the albatross. That's exactly what they do. And there are of course literary allusions here to coverage and bottle air.

And indeed in both bottle air is allowed. Betro and Coleridge is the rhyme of the ancient Mariner. The albatross is equated with something weighty and troublesome, which I think we could use as further proof that this supposed compliment in the Times's review is anything but.

I sincerely appreciate this opportunity to invoke bottle air and Coleridge in connection with Christie.

I simply couldn't pass that up so thank you very much for that message listener.

And then going back one novel further to the elephants can remember episode I co-hosted with Mark Altridge.

Another listener had a slightly different take on Christie's reference to the Sherlock Holmes short story, the adventure of silver blaze in that novel.

Fast forward a minute if you don't want anything from elephants can remember spoiled.

But the adventure of silver blaze is the home short story that contains the idea of the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime, that curious incident being that the dog did not bark.

So the deduction is an ironic one, which Christie invokes in a few different novels.

But as this listener points out there's actually another Sherlock Holmes short story, the adventure of Shaskum old place, which.

And now I'm quoting from the email I received features a plot of a dog owner switcher row with the dog growling at the imposter helping homes solve the case.

So even in her literary references hack if it sends us on the wrong trail.

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