REVIEW: The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly (Agatha Christie)

The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly
Author: Agatha Christie

This early Agatha Christie short story featuring Hercule Poirot was first published in the UK in October 1923 in The Sketch magazine. It was published in the United States in The Blue Book magazine in June 1925.

Wealthy parents hire Hercule Poirot to investigate the kidnapping of their son Johnnie. Days before the kidnapping the father started to receive threatening notes. The writer promised their son would be kidnapped on a certain date if they were not paid a huge sum of money. The money was not paid and the boy was kidnapped out of a house filled with people and even the police. How was this done? And by who? And....where is Johnnie?? Hercule is on the case!

Great story! And the television adaptation from Agatha Christie's Poirot (Season 1, episode 3) was also quite good! They had to pad the story a bit to lengthen it, but it stays basically true to the original. These stories were used to gain readers for Christie's writing in the months after the publication of her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. The first 25 short stories were first published in magazines that featured writings by various authors and started building the reader base for Christie's writing and the character of Poirot. Later the short stories were gathered into collections such as Poirot Investigates.

These short stories just give a taste of Poirot's immense sleuthing skills (and Christie's writing talent, of course)...his little grey cells. The length of only a few pages doesn't allow for the famous twist endings and reveals like Christie uses in her novels, but still showcase her most famous character. I'm having the best time reading these short investigations! I'm reading the text while listening to an audio book at the same time. I like hearing Poirot's dialogue in his lovely accent....and the audio narrator (Charles Armstrong in the versions I'm listening to) can pronounce the French correctly whereas I can't even come close. I'm reading/listening to each story and then watching the television adaptation. David Suchet is amazing as Poirot!

Because I am reading one version and listening to another I am reviewing each story separately. I will review the short story collections as soon as I have read all the stories in them.

On to the next story: The Market Basing Mystery!