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    The Secret of Chimneys
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    The Secret of Chimneys
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    The Secret of Chimneys
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Secret of Chimneys

    Written by Agatha Christie

    Narrated by Hugh Fraser

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    A brand new audio edition of Agatha Christie’s thriller, the first to feature Superintendent Battle and ‘Bundle’ Brent.

    Little did Anthony Cade suspect that a simple errand on behalf of a friend would make him the centrepiece of a murderous international conspiracy. Someone would stop at nothing to prevent the monarchy being restored in faraway Herzoslovakia.

    The combined forces of Scotland Yard and the French Surete can do no better than go in circles – until the final murder at Chimneys, the great country estate that yields up an amazing secret…

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJun 4, 2007
    ISBN9780007249923
    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 Secret of Chimneys

    4/5

    44 ratings12 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is a great example of the madcap kind of mysteries that are more or less romps around the Stately Houses of England, with mysterious strangers, sinister foreigners, bluff Americans, an odd tycoon or film star or two. Always some intrigue and romance thrown in. Sure, it's not exactly hard on the brain, but it is pure escapist fun, and that's why I love this book. Reminds me a bit of The Prisoner of Zenda. Neat little ending.
    • 4/5
      This was one of my favorite Agatha Christie novels, combining both mystery and romance. Thought it was great!
    • 2/5
      In The Secret of Chimneys one can see the clash of the different kinds of books that Christie wants to write. TSC is partly a modern romance, partly a thriller, partly a detective story and partly a murder mystery. And Christie herself seems quite uninterested in a large part of the story for chapters on end. By the end one feels that everything in the books happened so that this young woman and this young man could meet in a way that allowed each of them to realize just how spectacular the other is. Even the other characters in the book seem to be relatively unconcerned about the various plots and machinations against which this couples meet cute can play out.The convoluted coincidence ridden plot of this book unwinds itself less gracefully than in The Man in the Brown Suit but Christie’s ability to write a man who is attractive to women without making him a thug in a well tailored suit has improved. At least one doesn’t expect that the heroine of this book has settled for what will almost certainly be an abusive relationship.SPOILERLooking back and knowing what history has in store for the exciting Balkan country to which our hero and heroine are heading off at the end of the story one finds it believe that they will have a long or happy married life.
    • 3/5
      Occasionally during her career, Agatha Christie produced one-off thrillers, and this is one of them. Anthony Cade is working as a tour guide in Africa when a friend offers him the chance to obtain £1000 by delivering a manuscript to a London publisher, however on arriving in London his life is almost immediately put in danger and he becomes drawn into a series of plots involving an expert diamond thief and the heir to the throne of Herzoslovakia. While this is an entertaining read- not least for what Christie holds back about some of the characters until the very end- it's perhaps a little overlong and flags slightly in the middle.
    • 2/5
      I've been rereading some Agatha Christies, and while some of them are still fun, some are real duds to the eye of the modern reader. This one was made into part of a TV series, with Miss Marple added in, and the plot twisted and rearranged almost beyond recognition. And a good thing, too. This one has the usual upper crust British nobs in a country house, but with lots more xenophobia and racism than Christie usually showed. Cliched Eastern Europeans ("Herzoslovakians") with names too full of consonants, princes and presidents being assassinated, international jewel thieves, shady greasy foreigners of various stripes, deepest darkest Africa, implausible political machinations, incompetent conspirators, etc etc. And oh yeah, there's a murder.It's just too much. One or two of those elements can be quaint; all of them makes an annoying mishmash.
    • 4/5
      When I read Cards on the Table last month I was introduced to two Recurring Christie characters with which I was unfamiliar, Colonel Race and Superintendent Battle. I decided to read the other books in which they occur. This is the first appearance of Battle and he plays a major role as the detective. I really like this character and am sorry that she only used him in five novels. This novel was written shortly after The Man in the Brown Suit, Colonel Race’s first appearance. It is in her younger style and shares some similar melodramatic elements but this one seems to me to show her maturing as a writer. There were more surprises and the characters seemed to be better drawn. I enjoyed this immensely.
    • 4/5
      This is a fun frothy novel and is everything that The Secret Adversary wasn't. It is very much a novel of its time and is a reworking of the country house murder with romantic overtones. This is a novelist having fun with characters and story and it shows.
    • 4/5
      The Secret of Chimneys is the first Christie novel to feature Superintendent Battle, who will, over the course of his career, be the featured detective in two more mysteries, The Seven Dials Mystery and Toward Zero. Battle, however, takes second place to one Anthony Cade, who, when we first meet him, works as a tour guide in Africa. At a bar one day Cade meets an old buddy, James McGrath, who has been tasked with the delivery of the memoirs of the now-dead Count Stylptitch of Herzoslovakia to a London publishing firm. But McGrath has decided to seek his fortune in the gold fields, and offers Cade a tidy sum to go to England with the memoirs and a stash of letters that could be blackmail fodder for an unsuspecting Virginia Revel. Cade is off to England, and finds himself caught up between two sides of a touchy political situation. He also finds that he is a target of some very nasty people who are trying to get both the memoirs and the letters. The situation leads him to a house called Chimneys, the home of Lord Caterham, his daughter Bundle, and various diplomats and others interested in the political situation in Herzoslovakia. Upon his arrival, Cade finds himself as a chief suspect in the death of Prince Michael Obolovitch, the heir to the Herzoslovakian throne and negotiator of British oil interests in that country. Enter Superintendent Battle and the hunt for the murderer begins.As with most Christie novels, there are plenty of suspects, an abundance of motives, and an interesting array of lead characters. Unlike most of her stories, this one is filled with political intrigue, and the reader has to digest the background story of the country of Herzoslovakia before really delving into the mystery. This may be a bit off-putting to regular Christie readers, but it's worth the time and effort to get the story and the list of who's who regarding that nation as it sets an important backdrop to the various criminal activity throughout the book. It is rather complicated and at times convoluted, but still an interesting read, with a lovely twist at the end. If I were a reader who has decided that he or she would like to read through the Christie novels, I would not want to start with this one, since imho, it doesn't deliver the best Christie has to offer. My advice: read through the Poirots and the Marples, then tackle the others for something just a bit different.
    • 4/5
      This is the first of the series ostensibly centered around the character of Superintendant Battle of Scotland Yard. The Secret of Chimneys was written in 1925. This was written about five years before the Marple books and five years after the Poirot books. The main mystery centers around political skulduggery revolving around a fictional Balkan State. Adventure loving Anthony Cade leaves his job as a travel guide to carry some important papers to London. These are the memoirs of a Count who had his fingers in many pies and it is feared that these writings may reveal secrets dangerous to many in government circles. Anthony becomes a target and the fun begins.

      Christie writes with a light touch, quick pace and about amusing characters. This story was fun to read and I look forward to the next in the series. It was interesting to note in the Christie movie with this name Jane Marple was the lead protagonist. I will have to watch it and compare notes. The moguls of the movie business must be positive that not only can Miss Marple have only one hat or we won't recognize her, they must also believe that the public won't accept anything but Poirot and Marple. They may be right, I don't care for Tommy and Tuppence.
    • 3/5
      Sort of Agatha Christie does John Buchan (but not as well) - still amusing period detail...
    • 5/5
      I really love this! Hugh Frazier’s books are really good!
    • 3/5
      In August 2007 the BBC announced "Agatha Christie's crime novels, already immortalised on television, on film, on stage and in audio books, have been adapted as comic strip editions. The relaunch of Christie in this new way is timed to coincide with the annual Agatha Christie Week on September 9 to 15, 31 years after the novelist's death. The relaunch in comic form is an effort to make the world's second best-selling author more appealing to new and younger readers."In much less than an hour today I have read "THE SECRET OF CHIMNEYS", adapted by Francois Riveier, and illustrated by Laurence Suhner. The blurb asks "What connects Chimneys, a formidable country estate nestled in the English countryside, with the small Balkan nation of Herzoslovakia? If Anthony Cade had known the answer, perhaps the chance to earn a thousand pounds just delivering a parcel would not have seemed like such easy money!"The Agatha Christie site lists its RRP as £9.99.What you get for that price is 46 pages of quite well drawn comic frames, nice colour, a rather confusing story of espionage, jewel thieves, an international conspiracy, a romance, the debut appearance of Superintendent Battle, and absolutely no character development.Well, I hope nobody is kidding themselves that these comics, a total of 83 titles, are going to turn anybody into a reader of the Agatha Christie classics!The connection between this "graphic novel" and the original novel is just the main elements of the story. There is no suspense, and really none of what attracted readers to Agatha Christie's books.Pardon the cynic in me who sees them as part of a money-making, marketing exercise. On the back of the copy of SECRET OF CHIMNEYS which I borrowed from my local library the reader is encourage to "collect all of the new Agatha Christie adventures, adapted by some of the world's most original comic book artists".So if you are a collector you can now add another dimension to your collection of Agatha Christie memorabilia: to your hardbacks, paperbacks, audio tapes, audio CDs, films on VHS and DVD, jigsaw puzzles, book bags, mugs, PC games, Nintendo games, and deck chairs.