Click Clack Click Clack DING: The (Real) Secretaries of Agatha Christie (with Guest Co-Host Helen Frank)

All About Agatha Christie

Catherine Brobeck & Kemper Donovan

Arts, Books, Tv & Film, Film Reviews

4.7 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2025

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I could not be more thrilled to welcome back A+++ listener, and now two-time guest co-host, Helen Frank, to discuss the flesh-and-blood secretaries of Agatha Christie's life. We already covered the ones that Christie created for herself out of ink, so this episode is a completist's delight. So many secretaries! For those of you in the SoCal area, consider purchasing tickets for Christie's adaptation of Towards Zero, directed by former guest co-host Christopher Diehl! To visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page, click here. Visit the podcast on Instagram, and me personally at my author website. Loose Lips, the second book in my Ghostwriter Mysteries series, is currently available for purchase. You can also buy The Busy Body, the first book in my Ghostwriter Mysteries series, in paperback at your bookseller of choice (make it an indie if you possibly can) in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia and New Zealand.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to All About Agatha, the podcast dedicated to reading and drinking, every single mystery novel written by the Queen of Crime, Dame Agatha Christie.
0:15.2	I am Kemper Donovan, and in this episode, rock star listener, Helen Frank, who joined me on the fictional secretaries of Agatha Christie, is back.
0:26.8	The listener, so nice, I invited her twice.
0:30.0	Helen and I will be talking about the real secretaries of Agatha Christie, those secretaries who figured into Christy's life, and in some cases
0:41.4	inspired her fictional characters. But before I bring Helen back on, I wanted to do a mini
0:48.5	housekeeping segment, a listener mailbag lit, if you will, specifically concerning my and Helen's episode
0:56.6	on the fictional secretaries. That seemed appropriate, and I'll be honest with you, listeners,
1:01.2	I have so many listener messages to get through that it's helpful to break off a chunk right now.
1:07.5	I'll probably end up doing another mailbag episode at some point in the fall or the winter,
1:12.3	but I couldn't wait with these responses to the fictional secretary's episode. So here goes.
1:17.6	This is actually going to be a spoiler-heavy housekeeping segment, as it so often is.
1:23.0	The following Christie titles will be spoiled as I go through these messages to varying degrees.
1:29.3	Cat among the pigeons. Death comes as the end. Dead man's mirror. The dream. The hollow.
1:35.9	The incredible theft. The man in the brown suit. The mirror cracked from side to side.
1:41.4	A murder is announced. Passenger to Frankfurt, a pocket full of rye,
1:47.5	the submarine plans, and the underdog. You have been warned, listeners, and I will start off by
1:55.6	spoiling a non-Christie title, which is the Leavenworth Case by Anna, Catherine Green. So if you don't want
2:02.2	that spoiled, stop listening or fast forward a minute or two. But I recently covered the Leavenworth
2:08.8	case on Patreon. And this is a late 19th century American mystery that Christy references in her
2:17.3	autobiography as a foundational one for her, one that
2:21.6	influenced her early on. And for this reason, I should have mentioned it because guess who is
2:26.7	the murderer in the Leavenworth case? That's right. It's the secretary, the crazed male secretary.
	...

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