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 Kemper Donovan. I'm Catherine Brobeck. And this week we are reading and discussing the Seven Dial's Mystery, Dame Agatha's final thriller novel, very exciting, also the final novel of the 20s.

This was first published January 24th, 1929 by of course William Collins and Sons in the UK and this novel

revisit that treasured estate chimneys which we we first visited for the

secret of chimneys four years earlier, both in the world of the story,

it's made reference to the fact that the Secret of Chimneys took place four years earlier,

and in terms of publication, that was in 1925. So with that in mind, we're at Chimneys, the novel begins, let's talk about our victim.

So our victim is one Jerry Wade and he is a school chum of a number of the parties who have

gathered at chimneys chimneys at this point is serving essentially as an air

B&B for the upper crest.

What's basically happening here is that Lord Kaderam and his daughter Lady Eileen,

aka bundle, are the true owners and inheritors of chimneys, and we last saw them

in the secret of chimneys in possession of their house.

They have rented chimneys

for an unspecified period of time to these tenants, Sir Oswald Koot and his wife, Lady

Koot.

So the Kootes are in possession of chimneys when we open and they are playing host to a whole group of young things for the weekend.

So it's a weekend party at Chimneys and one of the guests is the aforementioned Jerry Wade.

He's annoying to his fellow Airbnbers because he gets up far too late.

He's the worst of them amongst his peers because he does not get up on time.

He sleeps late, he doesn't realize it, they're all annoyed by him.

He almost misses breakfast, practically lunchtime before they can stop

...