Audio Book: Thirteen At Dinner
Written by Agatha Christie (Audio Partners)
Reviewed by Louise Johnson

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This 6 disc, 6 hour 34 minute set is an absolutely engrossing Hercule Poirot mystery, ably read by Hugh Fraser, the actor who plays Captain Hastings in the A&E dramatizations of these books.

Beautiful actress Jane Wilkinson, aka Lady Edgeware, wants to remarry, but her eccentric husband refuses to allow her to divorce him. When Jane meets Poirot, she gets a brilliant idea: she'll have him reason with her husband and convince him to allow a divorce. Otherwise, she jokes, she may have to kill Lord Edgeware!

Two days later, Lord Edgeware has been murdered, and his wife is implicated - in fact, she apparently waltzed up to the door, announced herself to the butler, walked in to the library and stabbed him in the back of the neck. However, she was at a dinner party attended by twelve other people at the time of the murder.

The next hours of this audio book find Hercule Poirot, Captain Hastings and Inspector Japp working their way through a tangled web of twists, deceptions and more murders to find the true killer.

I have to say that toward the end of this story I had some ideas about what might have happened, but I had not come to the full conclusion and was surprised when the murderer was identified. I very definitely enjoyed the week I spent commuting to these discs. Great entertainment!

© 2003 - Louise Johnson