And Then There Were 62: The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie

All About Agatha Christie

Catherine Brobeck & Kemper Donovan

Tv & Film, Books, Film Reviews, Arts

4.7 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2016

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Are you a reader who loved "The Man in the Brown Suit" but found it sorely lacking in English country homes? Well, fear not, because this week's episode tackles a Christie novel overflowing with rose gardens, secret passageways, and... chimneys. Does the novel also bear a somewhat suspicious similarity to the plot of our last novel? It does! Join us as we explore this similarity, as well as the intricacies of fictional Balkan geopolitics, diamond thievery, and... chimneys... in this, Superintendent Battle's first case.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to All About Agatha,
0:07.0	The Podcast All About Agatha Christie,
0:09.7	in which we read and rank all 66 of Dame Agatha Christie's mystery novels.
0:17.2	This week we are tackling The Secret of Chimneys.
0:21.4	This was actually Dame Agatha's final book to be published via The Bodley
0:26.1	Head in June 1925 in the US later the same year. And it is another one of her, we could call it a thriller or an adventure story, but this is not a mystery puzzle.
0:37.0	So this is another one that has a rather twisty turny plot, and we are going to do a longer version of a synopsis compared to what we usually do with the
0:47.8	mystery puzzles and comment throughout.
0:51.3	So let's dive right in.
0:52.3	Our book opens much like certain elements of the man in the brown suit in what was at the time,
1:00.0	Southern Rhodesia, where we meet Anthony Cade who's lean, tanned, very handsome.
1:06.9	He is working as a tour guide, very close to Victoria Falls and he hates his job, hates his job.
1:14.0	Hates his job.
1:15.4	Guiding around he calls him a bunch of old sheep,
1:18.0	I think, which is, you know, pleasant.
1:20.5	But he happens to run into his old friend Jimmy McGrath, who we learn Anthony first met, quote unquote,
1:28.0	all dressed up ready for the cooking pot. In other words, he was going to be eaten by cannibals and Anthony
1:36.2	potted quote-unquote a few of them, i.e. he killed them, freed Jimmy
1:41.8	McGrath and then they ran off.
1:43.4	And Anthony is quite proud of the fact that he shot
1:47.2	the indigenous.
1:48.2	He's telling his sheep.
	...

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