The Listerdale Mystery
Author: Agatha Christie
First a bit of intro and then...the story!
I'm going to be doing a bit of skipping around in my quest to read Agatha Christie in publication order. Backtracking ..... again. Many of Christie's short stories were first published in detective and fiction magazines, and I found that most of the stories in the next two upcoming story collections were actually first published in the 1920s. So....stepping back....and looking at the stories from The Hound of Death and The Listerdale Mystery.
The Hound of Death is a collection of 12 short stories published in 1933 in the UK. This book was never published in the US. But, the stories were published in later collections in the US (namely, The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories (1948), Double Sin and Other Stories (1961) and The Golden Ball and Other Stories (1961). Eight of the 12 stories in the collection were published in various magazines in the 1920s. No prior publications of 4 of the stories prior to the 1933 collection have been documented.
The Listerdale Mystery is another collection of 12 stories published in book format in 1934. All 12 of these stories were published previously by Christie in magazines from 1924-1926. I couldn't find a copy of this particular collection, but all of the stories from it were also published in The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories and The Golden Ball and Other Stories.
So, I have checked out the 3 later story collections from my local library's digital site in audio format and I'm re-creating these two story collections by jumping from book to book. I'm going to review each story separately as they were first published at different times before being collected into a book. That way later I can check back and make sure I read/reviewed every short story.
Why audio and not the print or ebook version? I just like Christie short stories in audio....that way I get the lovely British accent, correct pronunciation of any place names or foreign words, I think it's just more fun. :)
That being said.....
The Listerdale Mystery!
The St Vincent family has fallen on hard times and lost their ancestral home. Mrs. St. Vincent hopes for better for her children than the boarding house where they now reside and lower marriages than they might once have had. When a town house comes up for rent at a ridiculously low cost, Mrs. St. Vincent hops at the chance, but her son Rupert thinks something untoward may have happened there. Who would let a fully furnished town house with servants included for so little....unless there was something shady about it?
The Listerdale Mystery was first published in The Grand Magazine in December 1925, and re-published in the short story collection of the same name in 1934. The story was not published in the US until 1971 when it was included in The Golden Ball and Other Stories.
I loved this story and was surprised to learn that it has never been adapted for television or radio. Maybe it's because the story doesn't involve any of Christie's well known fictional detectives like Hercule Poirot or Jane Marple. But those shows did not shy away from adapting other Christie stories to add the detective character of their choice....just surprised they passed this one up.
Very entertaining story! I enjoyed it!
I listened to an audio book version of this story from The Golden Ball and Other Stories (HarperAudio). Hugh Fraser (played Hastings in the Poirot television series) does a fabulous job of narrating as usual! Very enjoyable listen! I'm having to jump around a bit to listen to each story in this collection since I don't have a copy of The Listerdale Mystery....but that just makes the process a bit more fun! :) I will just sort of wind my way through all the stories from The Hound of Death and The Listerdale Mystery in the best way I can. :)
On to the next!
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