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'm Catherine Brobeck. I'm Kemper Donovan. by the Queen of Crime, De Meggoth to Christie.

I'm Catherine Brobeck.

I'm Kemper Donovan.

And happy new year to everybody.

We are starting this new year off with another novel,

and it is a Poiro.

And what Poiro might that be, Kemper?

Mrs. McGinty's dead.

Very exciting.

Why don't she tell us a little bit about the publication history?

So this was first serialized from October to December of 1951 in the Chicago Tribune,

interestingly, before being published in book form first, again the US by Dodd-Meed of course in February of

1952 and then by Collins Crime Club but of course in the UK in March 1952 and I actually have a fun tidbit about the UK

serialization of this which was in woman's journal and apparently the title was too

unappetizing for them and they wanted to change it.

Agatha had some choice words about this which she wrote to her agent, Edmond Cork, saying,

I really think WJ shouldn't take murder stories if they funk labeling them as such.

So she's not happy about that.

I also just want to note the dedication, which we don't often talk about, it's worth noting that the

book is dedicated to Peter Saunders, who was a theatrical producer.

I believe we mentioned him glancingly on our Patreon episode for Black Coffee because we were talking

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