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    The Seven Dials Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition
    The Seven Dials Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition
    The Seven Dials Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Seven Dials Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition

    Written by Agatha Christie

    Narrated by Emilia Fox

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    A practical joke goes chillingly, murderously wrong in Queen of Mystery Agatha Christie’s classic detective story, The Seven Dials Mystery.

    Gerry Wade had proved himself to be a champion sleeper, so the other houseguests decided to play a practical joke on him. Eight alarm clocks were set to go off, one after the other, starting at 6:30 a.m. But when morning arrived, one clock was missing and the prank then backfired, with tragic consequences.

    For Jimmy Thesiger in particular, the words ""Seven Dials"" were to take on a new and chilling significance. . . .

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJul 3, 2012
    ISBN9780062233868
    Author

    Agatha Christie

    Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.

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    Reviews for The Seven Dials Mystery

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      This Agatha Christie mystery had quite a different feel to it from the Miss Marple and Poirot mysteries. The protagonists were young people, rather than the more mature sleuths that Christie peopled her stories with. You find wealthy, carefree, Lady Eileen (aka Bundle) Brent and Jimmy Thesiger and their acquaintances trying to solve the murders of two of their friends. What it the Seven Dials group? Who are the mysterious members? I thought it was a pretty standard thriller/ mystery, but in the last section, there were many twists and turns and any guesses I had about the culprit and the mysterious group were turned on their heads. Excellent story.
    • 4/5
      It takes some time to get used to everything that's happening in the story, but once you do you'll thoroughly enjoy it. A lot of characters from "The Secret of Chimneys" reappear, but it's obvious early on that Agatha put some work in them this time. Story is also way better than the one in the "Chimneys", there is a lot more action and it's all packed neatly with occasional appearances from side characters.
    • 3/5
      In Christie's 1929 novel, a group of young people are gathered at Chimeys, a manor house that is being rented out by the Marquess of Caterham to Sir Coote. Upon the murder of Gerry Wade, the group finds themselves caught up in a mystery surrounding the group The Seven Dials. But of course, not everything is what it seems!This novel, what Christie herself called the "light-hearted thriller type", is more loosely-planned than her more complicated and famous works. There is definitely more wit and sarcasm from the characters, which was enjoyable. There were also several instances of characters comparing their adventures to those of detective novels that they have read, which was delightfully meta. However, I thought that the book went on longer than it should have, and I wanted the characters to get on with finally solving the mystery (which I still did not guess correctly, even though this is "lighter" detective fair). In all, an entertaining, if somewhat overlong, mystery, perfect for the beach.
    • 5/5
      This is a 1929 book by Mrs. Christie that has been adapted into an excellent movie—with John Guielgud perfectly incarnated in the skin of the Marquis of Caterhan, and James Warwick from “Tommy & Tuppence” playing the bad guy. A thoroughly enjoyable read with a quite surprising end that I defy you to guess! It’s a young Agatha Christie at her best. It reintroduces superintendent Battle and Lady Eileen (aka Bundle), who had their first appearances at Chimney’s; they are back to solve a entangled net of international espionage. Now, brace yourselves for the Introduction by Val McDermid… He warns readers of Christie’s lack of political correctness—I kid you not!—as if we were a bunch of little kids who need guidance. He then lectures readers on the shortcomings of “hidebound” Conservatism (to which he, at least admits, Mrs. Christie was a partisan); Conservatives, it seems, are a bunch of bigots, intolerant, narrow-minded creatures… I don’t know about others, but I enjoy reading authors such as Christie, Buchan, Sapper or Mason not only because of their literary capacities, but also BECAUSE of their lack of PC, so I’d appreciate the absence of this kind of “introduction”!
    • 4/5
      A solid entry in the Christie canon, with a nice little espionage-related mystery that includes some bits that are reminiscent of the later DEATH ON THE NILE. I nailed the perp in this one, as I'm well aware of the old "Warning A about B versus warning B about A" business. Still, a fun and worthwhile read.
    • 4/5
      Normally when I read an Agatha Christie I expect a good mystery with a bit of a story around it. That's why The Seven Dials Mystery really surprised me, it actually felt like a story which happened to have a mystery in it. It also had another quality that took me off guard. It is consistently funny. It does that wonderful thing of being effortlessly humorous in an understated, very British, way. The characters are wonderful, and the story flows well.The mystery, however, does not quite live up to the story.My main problem with the mystery in this book is that it is just too farfetched. The fact that the characters joke about how unlikely everything seems doesn't make it seem any less unlikely. The revelations aren't obvious or unsurprising, but for some reason they are presented in a way which I found to be oddly devoid of impact. Perhaps I would mind less if the book were by a different author. However, from Agatha Christie I tend to expect a mystery that, while it might be a little out there, at least doesn't require the reader to suspend their disbelief too much or too often.I therefore feel a little strange about this probably being one of my favourite Agatha Christie books to date. I really liked it, but for all the wrong reasons. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone craving a good Christie mystery, but I wouldn't hesitate recommending it to anyone who just wants a very entertaining, very English, quick read.I'll be continuing to read the Christie books in the order they were published. If this is an indication of the style she used in this era of her writing, and it is combined with the type of mysteries I know from her later books, I have a feeling that I might really, really, enjoy the next few Christie books I get around to reading.
    • 4/5
      Excellent storytelling with clever misdirection and red herrings to conceal the identity of the culprits. It's a light entertaining read set in the 1920's English countryside with a cast of cartoon-like characters. This edition has a superb Introduction written by Val McDermid.
    • 5/5
      1929, 2nd of 2 Bundle Brent, rural Chimneys manor house, and London; wonderfully trippy 1920s frothy semi-spy thriller, nicely calibrated and atmospheric, still fun; one of my all-time favorite AC novels.

      A pack of Bright Young Things is visiting Chimneys, a gloriously huge and old manor house in rural England, in the late 1920s. Most of them decide to play a joke on one of their lot, a terminally late sleeper whose lateness in the mornings has annoyed not a few people. Unfortunately, the joke goes sour when the young man is found to be, um, "terminal" - dying from supposedly having taken too much of a sleeping draught!

      We are slowly drawn into the plot by nicely dropped clues left for several protagonists, and get to follow them around the countryside and London as they attempt to unravel what the young man was really up to in his supposedly indolent life, and find many odd things just under the surface. This leads to the banding together of four of them, who work sometimes together (and sometimes in opposition) to come to the correct conclusions.

      It's a thrilling ride, but stagey in many spots, plus the solution is laid out at the end with only explication, not showing the actual capture of the final culprit (the film does show this, and it's a great scene). And, unfortunately, Christie here succumbs to a 1920s trope - withholding important information from the reader - while her cluing is mostly fair, she saves one big twist as a final shocker at the end that she doesn't telegraph anywhere in the novel. But if you can overlook those (to me) small things, this is a fun read, entertaining and totally unbelievable, in true 1920s thriller fashion. Good stuff, although not quite as good as the earlier THE SECRET ADVERSARY.

      DIALS lacks any true fear for the protagonists - everything is so light-hearted you just never believe any of them are truly in danger; the murder at the beginning is accomplished before we come to know the victim at all and thus doesn't feel that important; a second murder is only slightly less so, and very obviously needed to move the plot along and so somewhat acceptable to the reader's sensibilities. The main folks seem invulnerable despite many narrow escapes.

      But that's what a 20s thriller is supposed to be, and if, like I do, you enjoy That Sort Of Thing very much, then this is a book for you.

      (what follows isn't actually a spoiler, it's the story of how I came to first read Christie:
      Indirectly, this story was the one that opened up my appreciation for Agatha Christie, when a filmed version of it was shown in the USA in the very early 1980s or possibly late 1970s. I fell in love with the setting and the characters and, not least, with the humor and wickedly sly sensibilities of the show. (Superb acting, btw, as well, especially by Cheryl Campbell and James Warwick). I was, however, afraid that all the things I loved about it were due to the filmed version and not the story.

      You see, Christie was my Mum's favorite writer and so, being a contradictory child (grin) I disliked her work intensely for most of my teens and young adulthood. I, like many, thought her stories were old-fashioned and dry, dull things. Well, yes, they are old-fashioned, but most of her work has a sharp sensibility to it that lies just below the surface - all things in the lovely gardens of her stories are not necessarily pretty and sunny! She can be rather subtle emotionally sometimes, and I like that very much. After viewing the film I got a copy of the novel and read it, and... well, suffice it to say that I now own a complete HC set of her books... and am currently engaged in reading all her works in published sequence! (again! smile) )

    • 4/5
      I like this Christie work because it features neither Poirot nor Marple, although I enjoy both detectives very much. Instead we have Tuppence and Tommy Beresford. It was through this book I first learned about Seven Dials in London.
    • 3/5
      Gerry Wade is notorious for getting up late, and so his friends decide to play a practical joke on him while they're all staying at a country house. But the joke backfires when it is discovered that Gerry died during the night, ostensibly of an overdose of sleeping draught. Some time later Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent discovers a letter written by the victim, and makes the connection to the Seven Dials Society, a sinister secret organisation.I have to agree with some of the other reviewers that this is not Agatha Christie's best effort. Published in 1929, it feels rather tame nowadays, with a lot of skulking around corridors in the dead of night, and decidedly lacks in tension. It's all rather far-fetched (even more so than usual, I mean), with some parts threatening to descend into farce. The twist is quite neat, but anyone who's read a few Christie novels and stories will be able to figure out the villain fairly easily, bearing in mind the kind of twists the author was fond of.
    • 2/5
      As the ’20s came to an end, Christie – respected but still known as much for her regular short story writing than as some kind of ‘Queen of Crime’ – resurrected the characters of her early thriller-cum-mystery "The Secret of Chimneys" (including the stoic Superintendent Battle, who would return in three further books) for a second adventure. Unfortunately, it’s mediocre from start to finish. The characters lack panache (even those who had it in the former novel), and the story – and its ultimate solution – are utterly preposterous.
    • 4/5
      I initially listed "Secret of Chimneys" as non-series ,but I realized in fact that although it is not part of one of Christie's main series(poirot, Marple etc.) , it does have several if the same characters as The Seven Dials Mystery --inspector Battle, Bill Eversleigh, "Bundle" daughter of the lord who owns Chimneys (bit is currently renting it to a nouveau riche knight) etc. Like that story, it has a rather less than serious plot, and bears a strong resemblance to one of Anderson's "Bloodstained Eggcosy" series.
    • 1/5
      Christie returns to the world and characters we first met in The Secret of Chimneys. While, unlike some of her earlier books, this cannot be simply dismissed as fluff or a romp it is not an example of good plotting. Indeed it isn’t really a murder mystery at all. The murder occurs early enough to catch our interest but much of the book involves the escapades of a good of upper class English men and women whose feckless we are supposed to find charming. The final unwrapping of the murder is so by the way that it is hard to believe that even Christie thought much of it.
    • 5/5
      This book is amazing! I really didn't see the ending coming (though maybe I should have). It was a very fun and fast paced read.

    • 4/5


      Once again we have a gathering at Chimneys, which had been let out to Sir & Lady Coote..... The Cootes, and most of the previous political figures from "Secret of the Chimneys" are gathered again at a house party that the Cootes are giving. Unfortunately one of the young men has been murdered and seven alarm clocks (there had originally been eight) are found line up across the mantle across from his bed.

      After the murder, Sir & Lady Coote leave the Chimneys only to be invited back to a neighboring estate for a highly important political deal where Sir Coote's steel manufacturing will be involved.....

      As Bundle is driving through to town, she comes across a young man in the road & nearly runs him over. She swerves and misses him yet she finds him dead... his last words: "The Seven Dials.... Jimmy Thesiger". These words send Bundle off on a chase trying to discover who are the group members of the mysterious Seven Dials and how to stop them from committing more murders....

      Enter Inspector Battle; clam, cool, & with his ever present wry sense of humor.

      I didn't like this as much as "The Secret of Chimneys", but as I liked the characters I'm willing to rate this higher than had it been one of Christie's other detectives.
    • 3/5
      An entertaining read, especially with Ms. Fox performance. The mystery seemed convoluted but was fun to listen to. And I'm going to Hell, Damn and Ass more in every day conversation.
    • 5/5
      I know that some Christie fans loath this book, but I don't. Its entertaining and readable and she is just having fun with her writing. Superb
    • 4/5
      Two "bright young things" are dead, but their deaths are not declared murder. Several of their friends wonder though. A young woman, Lady Eileen, otherwise known as "Bundle," decides to investigate further, since one of the young men died in her arms. She teams up in an amateurish way with Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard.This mystery novel, written in 1929 was written after Lord Peter Wimsey and before Wooster and Jeeves. It has that same bantering tone of humour to it, more so than I've read in other mysteries by Agatha Christie. A fun romp, with several laugh out loud moments. I'm not altogether sure that the game was fair, but I was certainly mislead and enjoyed being so. Most of all, I simply enjoyed living in that time and place. Loved Bundle's father, the Marquis of Caterham.
    • 3/5
      This is one of a short trilogy the first and second of which taking place of a famous country estate called Chimneys. They feature Superintendent Battle and a coterie of 'bright young things' ei. young English men and women in their twenties from the wealthier classes who work desultorily at their jobs in the city or at the Foreign office and who call all the friends by nicknames they picked up in their youth like Socks or Pongo. These are usually headed by Bundle Brett who is the daughter of the earl who owns Chimneys.

      The story takes place in the twenties and and the main action begins at a weekend house party during which someone is inevitable killed so that there is as always a large cast of suspects. Naturally the amateur detectives are sure they can out do the police.

      The action is swift and the plot is nor too deep, just cryptic as in should be in the era of spies, secret clubs as well as secret criminal organizations. This not the best of Christie but it is fun. In this case I did not feel that it could be a fair play mystery because the reader was really lead astray in some cases. Still, the characters are all likable and Christie pokes fun at this class of people, both the nouveau riche and the landed aristocracy.
    • 3/5
      Substance: Closest thing Christies wrote to a Wodehouse romance. Ingenious fluff. Clues fairly presented and disguised, but no motivation for some of the actions by Inspector Battle and others.NOTE: The first Christie book I ever read, in the Sixties at Grandma's in the original hardcover edition, lifted later by some dratted light-fingered cousin. Saw the most recent movie on 2011-11-07 via Netflix: faithful to the original book, which only made things even more confusing, but the clothes and cars and houses are so cool.
    • 5/5
      The Seven Dials Mystery is a very good story. It's full of good little things, and two great things. The two great things are the wrongful depiction of the Seven Dials - wrongful being the key word - and the depiction of the main villain. I kept wondering what was the purpose of Lady Cootes' scenes and how Miss Wade would end up in the story. Well everything was well answered in the end. The author's sleigh of her writing hand was particularly deceiving this time, the masterful hand that always has something special up her sleeve reserved for those special books which rise to greatness. This book is one of them. I must say I have nothing insightful to say about this book, but that sometimes happens. The Seven Dials is a fun book, and the fact that it's not layered does not diminish its enjoyment.
    • 3/5
      The house and several characters from "The Secret of Chimneys" return for a romp - tracking down a mysterious secret society and a super criminal.
    • 4/5
      A weekend house party at the fashionable country mansion Chimneys turns to tragedy when Gerry Wade, one of a party of young men employed by the Foreign Office, dies in his sleep. Always late for breakfast, surely even Gerry could not have slept through the eight alarm clocks set to ring one after the other at half past six in the morning. The doctor's verdict is that Gerry took an overdose of a sleeping potion. But wait, one of the clocks is missing: there are only 7 dials lined up, ticking away on the mantlepiece of his bedroom.Another of the young men from the Foreign Office is dead within weeks. His dying words to Lady Eileen (Bundle) Brent, into the path of whose car he stumbles, are Seven Dials and Tell .... Jimmy Thesiger.Gerry Wade had referred to Seven Dials in his last letter to his sister, so Bundle and Jimmy begin to investigate the connections. The policeman investigating the death of the latest victim is Superintendent Battle who first appeared in THE SECRET OF CHIMNEYS and whom Bundle knows quite well.Some readers won't have picked up on the connection between THE SEVEN DIALS MYSTERY and Agatha Christie's first novel THE SECRET OF CHIMNEYS. Not only is the location the same, but some of the same characters whom we already know and trust make an appearance: Lady Eileen Brent, Superintendent Battle, and Bill Eversleigh.Sir Oswald Coote, an industrialist of great influence and power in the British economy, has been renting Chimneys from the Marquis of Caterham for 2 years. After the death of Gerry Wade Lord Caterham and his daughter Bundle move back into Chimneys.Other things to consider: * Is Agatha Christie in this, her 9th novel in as many years, still looking for a protagonist/detective? This is Superintendent Battle's second appearance. To me he is still a rather stolid character, and we almost never see how his mind works. By the end of THE SEVEN DIALS MYSTERY we certainly know more about him, but will we see him again? * It is interesting to note that THE SEVEN DIALS MYSTERY is almost a sequel to THE SECRET OF CHIMNEYS and carries with it the same sense of espionage and industrial secrets being sold to enemies. At the time of its publication, fans of Agatha Christie would have recognised this. * In places in THE SEVEN DIALS MYSTERY the dialogue is almost theatrical, stagish, with swift repartee and sometims very evocative of a comedy of errors. * Christie presents a number of possibilities, there are many characters to whom w2e must attach a real identity and so there are many puzzles to be solved. But it could also be said that here again is another case where she doesn't quite "play fair" with the reader. * BEWARE POSSIBLE SPOILER: Agatha Christie plays with her readers. I won't disclose too much here, but the reader actually trusts the culprit and at times sees events from his point of view, with little indication that he is not to be trusted. Other people whom we trust also trust this character, so not only do we have to sift theough the red herrings so liberally provided, but we have to deal with an unreliable witness.
    • 5/5
      Themes: adventure, secret criminal organizations, exotic foreign adventuresses, stolen government plans, and plenty moreSetting: Chimneys in EnglandIf you've only read Agatha Christie for her mysteries featuring the famous Belgian sleuth or the mild old lady with the mind like a steel trap, then you have missed some thrilling adventure stories. This one is the second one set at the Stately Home of Chimneys in England. The first one, The Secret of Chimneys, takes place four years earlier and involves the missing heir to the throne of a fictional European country, a stolen government contract, the Comrades of the Black Hand or something like that, and a very satisfying love story. This one differs only in the details; the feel is just the same.Lady Eileen Brent, known to all as Bundle, discovers that a young man of her acquaintance has died in her home. They had let it to a wealthy industrialist, and during a house party, the man had died in his sleep. Now Bundle nearly runs over the dead man's best friend, who dies of a gunshot wound in her arms, whispering the words, "Tell - Seven Dials - Jimmy Thessinger." Bundle rushes off to find Jimmy and enlist him in her fight against this evil criminal gang.Really, really fun. I listened to this one, and I do have a few complaints about the audio version. The reader, whose name I can't locate, did fine with the voices of most of the major characters, but she had a tendency to make the rest of the young girls screechy and shrill. I didn't like Superintendent Battle's accent either. She did a good job at making them all sound different, but she was much too screechy now and then, and the American woman at the very end was just dreadful. No one sounds like that. Ever.If you want an exciting, clean adventure with some romance and not a lot to slow it down, try the stand alone titles by Agatha Christie. I also love The Man in the Brown Suit, Why Didn't They Ask Evans?, and They Came to Baghdad. 5 stars for book, 4 for audio.E
    • 3/5
      Not your standard Agatha Christie whodunit, this is a crime adventure involving a bunch of characters who could have strayed in from a P. G. Wodehouse novel. Young aristocratic ladies with nicknames like "Socks" and "Bundle", and their always-late-to-breakfast male counterparts, along with butlers, footmen, minor nobility, and nouveau riche businessmen, get tangled in an implausible tale of secret societies, cryptic policemen, suspicious foreigners, and espionage that could have been dreamed up by G. K. Chesterton (with a touch of "The 39 Steps"). The revelatory twist in the tale was so radical that I almost felt I had to go back and read the whole story again to see if everyone's actions in the early part of the book really were consistent with the final explanation. The 1920s ambience is so perfect as to seem almost contrived, until you remember that it was actually written in the 1920s! Not deep, but fun. MB 31-vii-2008