Agatha Christie - The Adventure Of The Christmas Pudding and other stories

Unabridged and read by Hugh Fraser. 6 hours 21 mins duration, 6 CDs. (32 kbps / 22 kHz Mono Fhg CBR MP3)

A short story collection first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 24 October 1960. It is the only Christie first edition published in the UK that contains stories with both Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. It retailed in the UK for twelve shillings and sixpence (12/6) and comprises six cases. It was not published in the US although the stories it contains were published in other volumes there.
The opening title in this short story collection, "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding" is one of two 'main courses' that Mrs Christie follows with 'a selection of Entrees'. The author blends her Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, into the social milieu of Kings Lacey, a fourteenth-century English manor house. The perfect White Christmas that so seldom visits England is alive with hearty, happy children, and all the Christmas food they could wish for, while the stolen ruby of an Indian prince provides a dash of the exotic. It is the children's Christmas sport, teasing their unexpected Belgian guest with a game of 'Murder' that prevents greed turning to tragedy. An emphasis on dressing up and disguise per se enhances the zest for greed throughout this collection. The reader follows Hercule Poirot from Spanish treasure chests, to the goldmines of Africa, to a Chelsea restaurant where a rich old man suddenly changes his diet to gorge on rich food and blackberries, oodles of blackberries, realizing along the way that nothing is quite what it appears. Agatha Christie's final tale, "Greenshaw's Folly" returns the reader to the ostensibly comfortable world of the English country house in the company of Miss Jane Marple. The property itself is a sort of disguise. In contrast to Kings Lacey, Greenshaw's Folly is a nineteenth-century fake, the delight of a self-made man, who built to 'impress' or out of 'sheer exuberance of wealth'. The house is a rum mixture of architectural styles: the chateau of the Loire clash with the Taj Mahal and Venetian palazzi conflict with the Moorish influence. An aesthetic friend of Inspector Raymond West, Miss Marple's nephew, hails the Folly as a 'gem' but it is a treasure he will add to his collection of photographs of architectural 'monstrosities'. The pretentiousness of Greenshaw's Folly is innocuous enough but the house will be splattered with blood in a deadly game of pretense when, two generations later, West meets a 'real' housemaid and a woman who reminds him of a French Marquise.