Claim OwnershipAll About Agatha Christie
Subscribed: 1,908Played: 99,094
Subscribe
© All rights reserved
Description
All About Agatha is a podcast all about, well, Agatha. Agatha Christie, of course: the Queen of Crime, a real-life Dame of the British Empire, and author of sixty-six mystery novels that spanned the Twentieth Century, defining a genre. For five years, Catherine Brobeck and Kemper Donovan revisited these novels in publication order, ranking them according to pre-set criteria (plot, character, etc.). Tragically, Catherine Brobeck passed away at the end of 2021. Since then, Kemper has completed the podcast's ranking project, and now contents himself with celebrating the greatness of Christie by attempting to solve the ultimate mystery where she is concerned. Why Christie--and Christie alone--endures as powerfully as she does.
272 Episodes
Reverse
It's time to discuss those pesky Americans who appear in the Christie canon, and answer such burning questions as: Are all Americans millionaires? (Alas, no.) Do all Americans speak solely by way of idiom? (Happily, no.) I was also able to answer a ton of mailbag questions, which involved one hundred percent more Spice Girls than I expected it to. The following titles are spoiled to varying degrees in this episode: The Actress; After the Funeral; The Big Four; A Caribbean Mystery; Cat Among the Pigeons; Death on the Nile; Destination Unknown; Endless Night; Evil Under the Sun; Lord Edgware Dies; The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side; Motive v. Opportunity; The Mousetrap (though only in a minor way), Mrs. McGinty’s Dead; A Murder is Announced, Murder on the Orient Express; The Soul of the Croupier; Sparkling Cyanide; They Do It With Mirrors. To visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page, click here. Visit the podcast on Twitter and Instagram. Visit me personally on Facebook at Kemper Donovan Books, or at my personal website. Click here to purchase tickets for my panel at the upcoming Agatha Christie Festival. You can buy my debut mystery novel, The Busy Body, 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.
It's raining long-haired, antique-loving, architecturally-inclined men! And a few women, too! June is Pride month for the LGBTQIA+ community here in the United States, which I took as an opportunity to explore the topic of "gay" characters in Christie... along with revisiting an interview Catherine Brobeck and I did with long-time friend of the podcast, Jamie Bernthal. Enjoy, my dears! The following titles are spoiled to varying degrees in this episode: The Mousetrap, The Rats, “Death by Drowning,” “Greenshaw’s Folly,” After the Funeral, Cards on the Table, Endless Night, Five Little Pigs, Hallowe’en Party, Lord Edgware Dies, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, The Moving Finger, Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, A Murder is Announced, Murder is Easy, Nemesis. To visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page, click here. Visit the podcast on Twitter and Instagram. Visit me personally on Facebook at Kemper Donovan Books, or at my personal website. Click here to purchase tickets for my panel at the upcoming Agatha Christie Festival. You can buy my debut mystery novel, The Busy Body, 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.
It isn't every day a new discovery is made regarding a physical record of Agatha Christie's writing, especially one from her earliest days as a writer.... Thank you to journalist Karen Robinson for sitting down with me to talk about What We Did in the Great War by Agatha Christie... and by others in the VAD in Torquay during the First World War! It was a fantastic discussion. For information about the exhibition in London where you can see this handmade magazine for yourself, click here. To visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page, click here. Visit the podcast on Twitter and Instagram. Visit me personally on Facebook at Kemper Donovan Books, or at my personal website. Click here to purchase tickets for my panel at the upcoming Agatha Christie Festival. You can buy my debut mystery novel, The Busy Body, 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.
It's another episode focused on the adaptations of Agatha Christie: specifically, those talented actors who have brought life to Monsieur Poirot and Miss Marple in films and television for nearly 100 years now. Who will win the title of Greatest Poirot and Greatest Marple of Them All? And how will the rankings leading up to my #1 picks shake out? I surprised myself with a few of my choices here, and I look forward to receiving outraged responses from at least a few of you. Special thanks to Scott Ratner for his spirited commentary on one of these actors, and the valuable insights his perspective provided. Please note that I spoil the plot of Curtain, and also the 2018 adaptation of The ABC Murders in this episode. Click here to purchase tickets for my panel at the upcoming Agatha Christie Festival. Please visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page by clicking here. You can buy my debut mystery novel, The Busy Body, at your bookseller of choice in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia and New Zealand. I mentioned a few different adaptations over the course of this episode. Click below to access them. Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple (Japanese-language animated series) Murder by the Book (starring Ian Holm and Peggy Ashcroft) Various BBC radio plays Viki.com (where you can watch Ms. Ma, Nemesis)
Saturday, April 27th is Independent Bookstore Day here in the United States, and what better way to celebrate than with this live interview from my book tour last week at Schuler Books in Grand Rapids, Michigan?! Special thanks to Elizabeth Bosscher for conducting this interview. I had such a great time sitting down with her. If you'd like to visit or learn more about Schuler Books, which has four locations in Michigan, click here. Please visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page by clicking here. Click here to purchase tickets for my upcoming panel at the Agatha Christie Festival. You can buy my debut mystery novel, The Busy Body, at your bookseller of choice (though please do opt for an indie if you possibly can!) in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia and New Zealand.
Andrew Winans is the director of a new off-Broadway production of Christie's theatrical adaptation of her superb novel, The Hollow. I loved getting to speak with someone who has been in the trenches with his cast of actors and crew of professionals over the past few months, bringing this Agatha Christie play to life.... To purchase tickets for this run of The Hollow (13-21 April) at The Players Theatre in downtown New York, click here. Come visit me on my ongoing book tour for my mystery novel, The Busy Body! Click here for details. The Busy Body is available to purchase in the United States, the United Kingdom (where it is available via Kindle for £0.99 for all of April!), and Australia and New Zealand. Please visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page here. Click here to purchase tickets for my upcoming panel at the Agatha Christie Festival in September.
Next week's episode will be a discussion with Andrew Winans, the director of an upcoming Off-Broadway production of The Hollow, a play written by Agatha Christie, based on her novel. If you are interested in attending this production, which runs from 13-21 April in New York, go ahead and click here. And my East Coast/Midwest tour of the United States for The Busy Body is about to begin! Click here for more details. I hope to see some of you very soon--in person!
If you're a longtime listener of this podcast, you'll know never to trust an actor in a Christie story. So what happens when not one but two actors feature among the rather small cast of suspects? A lot, as it turns out, in this early short story that showcases Christie's unique ability to spin seemingly endless variations on a single puzzle.... In addition to the titular story, the following Christies are spoiled in the course of this episode: "Miss Marple Tells a Story” "The Affair at the Bungalow” "Murder in the Mews” Cat Among the Pigeons Three Act Tragedy Death in the Clouds And Then There Were None The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Lord Edgware Dies Evil Under the Sun To purchase tickets for my panel at the upcoming Agatha Christie Festival, click here. To visit the Festival website and check out all the other fantastic panels on offer, click here. For details on my upcoming book tour in the Northeast and Midwest of the U.S., click here. Please visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page here. You can purchase my debut mystery novel, The Busy Body, in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia and New Zealand.
Quick: what is the best Joan Hickson adaptation of a Miss Marple novel? Or how about your least favorite Suchet episode? If you like pondering such questions, then this is the episode for you! Just beware of spoilers; I list all the novels Teresa and I spoil in the course of this wide-ranging conversation at the top of the episode. To buy tickets to the All About Agatha Live! Panel at the upcoming Agatha Christie Festival in Torquay in September, click here. To check out all the splendid events at this year's Agatha Christie Festival, click here. Go wild perusing all that Teresa and Bill at Peschel Press have to offer here. Come visit me in mid-April while I’m on tour in the Northeast and Midwest of the United States! Click here for details. You can buy my debut mystery novel, The Busy Body, in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia and New Zealand. You can visit and subscribe to the podcast’s Patreon page here.
Sarah Hinlicky Wilson is back! And with this episode, she’s officially earned her title as All About Agatha’s resident expert on Christian theology. I leaned heavily on her expertise for this episode, which involves a lot of parsing of Biblical and even apocryphal references, as we discussed this curious, fascinatingly revealing short story from the Star Over Bethlehem and Other Stories collection. To read Sarah’s newly published article “Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Christian,” click here. To visit Sarah’s website, click here. To visit my website to check out upcoming dates and locations for my book tour, click here. You can buy my debut mystery novel, The Busy Body, in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia and New Zealand. Please visit and subscribe to the podcast’s Patreon page here.
Actor Lee Samuel Tanng has appeared in TEN (!!) regional productions of plays based on Agatha Christie novels over the last eleven years. He sat down with me to discuss the joys of regional theater, the particular challenges (and advantages) of pulling off a murder mystery in real time, and of course, to rank his ten experiences from least to most favorite. This conversation was a blast. You can see a collage of all Sam's roles on the podcast's Twitter/X account here, and on Instagram here. Check out the Long Beach Playhouse here, which is where Sam has appeared in all these wonderful productions over the years. Long live regional theater! Please visit and suscribe to the podcast's Patreon page here. Click here for more information on upcoming book tour events for my debut mystery novel, The Busy Body. And you can now purchase The Busy Body in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia and New Zealand.
Perhaps it was inevitable that an episode about the longest-running play in history would be the longest episode ever produced on this podcast.... And yet there's nary a spoiler in it; so tuck in, safe in the knowledge that the secret of The Mousetrap remains safely locked in my heart. Nibble nibble. Squeak squeak. Special thanks to my guests Phil O'Neill and Scott Ratner, and to Nick Cardillo and Christopher Diehl for their invaluable contributions. Click here to access the BBC Documentary The Mousetrap and Me, which I reference in the show. You can find Phil O'Neill's wonderful book, Poems from the Unconscious, here, and Scott Ratner's extremely funny original play, Kill a Better Mousetrap, here. You can find my Crimereads article on why Agatha Christie has endured uniquely among mystery writers here. You can now purchase my debut mystery novel, The Busy Body (as a paper copy, ebook, or audio book), in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia and New Zealand. Click here for more information on upcoming book tour events for The Busy Body. Please visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page.
Alex Michaelides has a new mystery out, and I had such a great time geeking out with him about Agatha Christie and other literary inspirations of his, including the great Ruth Rendell. You can purchase Alex's new book, The Fury, in the United States here. And you can pre-order it in the UK (it's out February 1st) here. You can purchase my new book, The Busy Body, in the United States here, the United Kingdom here, and Australia/New Zealand here. For details on my upcoming book tour, visit my website here. You can visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page here. This episode is sponsored by Even the Royals, which you can find wherever you listen to podcasts, including here.
I've talked a bunch--especially recently--about Agatha Christie and the theater. But what is it like to put on an Agatha Christie play? In particular, in one of those smaller regional/community venues that so frequently put on Christie's plays? Thanks to the three experts I gathered together for this episode, we can begin to answer that question. You can find out more about each of them directly below. 1) Do yourself a favor and check out Brad Friedman's mystery blog. It has provided me heaps and heaps of both entertainment and insight. 2) You can look up Christopher Diehl's community theater here. And here is a link to another theater where he works on numerous projects, including those by Christie. 3) Click here to check out Jamie West's debut mystery novel, Death on the Pier, inspired by his love of mystery and theater. If you'd like to come see me on my upcoming book tour, the details are on my website here. And you can still pre-order that book (for a few more weeks) in the United States here, the United Kingdom here, and Australia/New Zealand here. Please visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page. This episode is sponsored by Britbox. For listeners in the U.S. and Canada, click here and use the promo code "AGATHA" at checkout for 50% off the first month of your monthly subscription.
1And you thought the days of bumper-sized episodes of All About Agatha were behind you.... This one might be a bit of a cheat, since it's a Frankenstein's monster (a Bella Baxter?!) of a few different things: 1) a nice long "mail bag"/"housekeeping" segment; 2) a fresh episode analyzing "The Naughty Donkey" in Christie's Star Over Bethlehem and Other Stories collection; and 3) a rerun of the episode I aired in the summer this year with Sarah Hinlicky Wilson co-hosting, in which we discussed the titular story of the same collection. So much Christie, so much Christianity, so much Christmas. Rejoice! You can check out Sarah's short story podcast here. You can see my upcoming book tour events (!!) here. Please come see me! You can pre-order my mystery novel, The Busy Body, in the United States here, in the United Kingdom here, and in Australia and New Zealand here. You can visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page here. This episode is sponsored by BritBox. For listeners in the U.S. and Canada, click here and use the promo code "AGATHA" at checkout for 50% off the first month of your monthly subscription.
Kate Jackson knows her stuff when it comes to classic crime, and then some. I had such a good time talking to her about non-Christie authors of the Golden Age, and then engaging in a choose-your-own-adventure-style exercise that took us through various plot points she meticulously pulled from scores of Christie novels, short stories, and plays. What fun! To buy Kate's book How to Survive a Classic Crime Novel in the U.S., click here. In the UK, click here. To check out Kate's blog, click here. To visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page, click here. To pre-order a copy of my upcoming mystery novel The Busy Body in the U.S., click here. In the UK, click here. And in Australia and New Zealand, click here.
It's time to discuss friend of the podcast Sophie Hannah's murder mystery musical movie!! Mystery and musical fans, unite!! To rent/buy Sophie's movie in the U.S., click here. To rent/buy Sophie's movie in the UK, click here. To visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page, click here. You can pre-order my mystery novel, The Busy Body, in the United States (here), the United Kingdom (here), and Australia and New Zealand (here). This episode is sponsored by Britbox. For listeners in the U.S. and Canada, click here and use the promo code "AGATHA" at checkout for 50% off the first month of your monthly subscription.
If you like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, then this episode is for you! If you like theater, then this episode is *really* for you! Mark was a delight; his passion for Ackroyd, theater, and all things Agatha Christie shines through our entire conversation. Enjoy! Click here to download the Orson Welles radio adaptation of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd referenced in the episode. Click here to visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page. You can pre-order my upcoming mystery novel, The Busy Body, in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia and New Zealand. This episode is sponsored by Britbox. For listeners in the U.S. and Canada, click here and use the promo code "AGATHA" at checkout for 50% off the first month of your monthly subscription.
What an excellent opportunity this conversation was to use--and explain--such new-fangled terms as "Booktube," "Bookstagram," and "BookTok." If the online world of readerly appreciation befuddles you (as it often does me), then allow Mara Sinclair to explain all.... For more Mara in your life, check out her YouTube Channel, Bookslikewhoa. You can also find Mara on Goodreads, Instagram, and Discord. You can pre-order my upcoming mystery novel, The Busy Body, in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Please visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page. This episode is sponsored by Britbox. For listeners in the U.S. and Canada, click here and use the promo code "AGATHA" at checkout for 50% off the first month of your monthly subscription.
'Tis the season for a spooky Christie story, and this one does not disappoint. On the contrary, I would argue it raises the bar by marrying elements of the supernatural and the rational, all in one text. Apparently you can have a trick and a treat; you don't have to choose! Please visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page here. You can pre-order my upcoming mystery novel, The Busy Body, in the U.S. here. And you can pre-order The Busy Body in Australia and New Zealand here. You can visit Mara Sinclair's BookTube channel (the subject of my next episode) here. This episode is sponsored by Britbox. For listeners in the U.S. and Canada, click here and use the promo code "AGATHA" at checkout for 50% off the first month of your monthly subscription.
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States
Hi Kemper, would you ever consider interviewing the cast of Agatha Raisin. I think it would be a very good idea for an episode. Kind Regards, Alacoque
a perfect guest host. I cried a lot but also was weirdly relieved to have Catherine's cause of death to be a genetic condition-- I had sort of assumed it was su1c1de and that made me feel so much worse.
This is an outstanding episode with a very important critic! Gillian Gill has paved the way for many to reconsider Christie's magic and talent away from formulaic cupboard writing. Soon I will be defending my thesis on her gender play and this has helped me greatly. thank you so much. Very well done as always!
Wonderful to have you back Kemper, so lovely to hear your discussion with Sophie.
It was indeed extremely saddening to hear Katherine in this episode. I ofcourse never met or spoke to you guys , but the both of you were a great comfort during the pandemic , with your amazing podcasts . Rest in peace to Katherine , and heartfelt condolences to her family . May god give them the strength to deal with this loss. Katherine also sounded weaker than usual. Hopefully she was not in pain. Rest well, fellow Christie nerd ♥️
I've only recently discovered your podcast, and Catherine is a delight - so knowledgeable, so insightful. I'm so sorry to hear of her death; she was clearly a fabulous young woman with a wonderful life ahead of her x
I'm so sorry for your loss. we knew her as a friendly voice but you knew her as a whole person.
oh my god. I'm so devastated to hear this.
my deepest condolences. How did she pass?
'Ode To A Nightingale' by John Keats was probably the inspiration for the working title.
The twisted paper in the vase is for lighting candles from the fire.
I wish the male host would stop interrupting people.
We have been blessed. FINALLY.
not what I thought it would be. don't like it
I love this podcast! I’ve only discovered it recently and I’m completely binge listening to all the episodes. The hosts are intelligent and gracious and humorous. Anyone who enjoys reading or watching crime stories will love it. It’s such a joy!
I'm just commenting to increase engagement. find this podcast, christie lovers! they do a good job. older eps have kind of so-so audio quality but it gets better as they go along.
This episode is ok but not one of their strongest
Charming, entertaining, informative and fun podcast for Christie fans. I really love how it makes you feel part of a community.
yes, this is a fun podcast! the sound quality is not great at first but you can always skip the first few episodes if it really bothers you. later eps get much better. They do research and actually think about what they want to say also, I really like how they don't commit any of what I call podcast sins. they don't waste time talking about unrelated things. they never eat while they record. they almost never go on tangents. All in all, a great podcast for fans of Christie.
I was rather taken by the "I've Forgotten You" renditions in the Suchet adaptation. So much so that I went on to look for the full length version. The Suchet adaptation should have done an OST after the serie is done