
Bodies from the Library 3
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Narrated by:
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Philip Bretherton
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By:
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Tony Medawar
About this listen
This anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together 16 tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form.
The Golden Age of detective fiction had begun inauspiciously with the publication of E.C. Bentley’s schismatic Trent’s Last Case in 1913, but it hit its stride in 1920 when both Agatha Christie and Freeman Wills Crofts – latterly crowned queen and king of the genre – had crime novels published for the first time. They ushered in two decades of exemplary mystery writing, the era of the whodunit, the impossible crime and the locked-room mystery, with stories that have thrilled and baffled generations of readers.
This new volume in the Bodies from the Library series features the work of 16 prolific authors who, like Christie and Crofts, saw their popularity soar during the Golden Age. Aside from novels, they all wrote short fiction – stories, serials and plays – and although most of them have been collected in books over the last 100 years, here are the ones that got away…
In this book you will encounter classic series detectives including Colonel Gore, Roger Sheringham, Hildegarde Withers and Henri Bencolin; Hercule Poirot solves ‘The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’; and Dorothy L. Sayers’ chilling ‘The House of the Poplars’ is published for the first time.
With a full-length novella by John Dickson Carr, this diverse collection concludes with some early ‘flash fiction’ commissioned by Collins’ Crime Club in 1938. Each mini story had to feature an orange, resulting in six very different tales from Peter Cheyney, Ethel Lina White, David Hume, Nicholas Blake, John Rhode and – in his only foray into writing detective fiction – the publisher himself, William Collins.
©2020 Tony Medawar (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
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Performance
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Story
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Overall
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Performance
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Wonderful!
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James Bennett, nephew of Sir Henry Merrivale (the cantankerous yet genius sleuth), has been invited to stay at White Priory for Christmas, among the retinue of the glamorous Hollywood actress Marcia Tait. Her producer, her lover, her playwright and her agent are all here along with the haughty master of the estate, Canifes and his daughter. So many suspects they become when Marcia Tait is found dead on Christmas morning in the lakeside pavilion, having been left there alone the night before and with a distinct lack of footprints in the snow to reveal any possible killer.
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More, please.
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By: Carter Dickson
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The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries
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- Unabridged
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Edgar Award winner Otto Penzler returns with a new anthology of exhilarating mysteries, assembling Victorian society's lords and ladies and most miserable miscreants. Behind the velvet curtains of horse-drawn carriages and amid the soft glow of the gaslights are the detectives and bobbies sniffing out the safecrackers and petty purloiners who plague everything from the soot-covered side streets of London to the opulent manors of the countryside. Brush off your dinner jackets and straighten out your ball gowns for these exciting, glitzy mysteries.
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Good to listen to over the holidays
- By Linda Conover on 01-01-23
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Midsummer Mysteries
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- By: Agatha Christie
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- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Summertime—as the temperature rises, so does the potential for evil. From Cornwall to the French Riviera, whether against a background of Delphic temples or English country houses, Agatha Christie’s most famous characters solve complicated puzzles as the stakes heat up. Pull up a deckchair and enjoy plot twists and red herrings galore from the bestselling fiction writer of all time.
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Mystery Maven
- By Mystery Maven on 05-23-23
By: Agatha Christie
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The Last Seance
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- By: Agatha Christie
- Narrated by: Fenella Woolgar
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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For lovers of the supernatural and the macabre comes this collection of ghostly and chilling stories from legendary mystery writer Agatha Christie. Fantastic psychic visions, specters looming in the shadows, encounters with deities, a man who switches bodies with a cat - be sure to keep the light on whilst listening to these tales. The Last Séance gathers 20 stories, some featuring Christie’s beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, in one haunting compendium that explores all things occult and paranormal, and is an essential omnibus for Christie fans.
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Not bad
- By CindiLM on 02-18-20
By: Agatha Christie
What listeners say about Bodies from the Library 3
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- ka&freddy
- 06-10-21
yes!
love. so interesting because of notes about each author before stories. made it fun!!
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- lps562
- 11-11-22
Awesome!
Loved the stories and the great narration of gifted actor Philip Bretherton! Somehow, book 4 of this series isn’t available on Audible. Would love to see that added! :)
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- Kindle Customer
- 09-12-22
Unexpected Treasure, Doesn’t Disappoint
I purchased the first two volumes of Bodies from the library and thoroughly enjoyed both of them. Imagine my surprise on discovering a third volume…JACKPOT!
I enjoyed most of the stories especially those last six stories based on “an orange”. The Agatha Christie story while enjoyable, due in large part to Phillip Brereton’s, echoed the plot of her novel “Dumb Witness, and unlike other stories in the anthology did not constitute an original undiscovered story to me.
Despite that one disappointment, I wholeheartedly recommend this book to any fan of Golden Age mysteries! Take a chance, you will not regret!
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- John
- 07-24-20
Looking Forward to Volume 4
The first collection blew me away. I was (somewhat) disappointed by the second. Now I just enjoy these for what they are: collections of curios and occasional treasures; odds and ends that maybe even their authors felt were not worth preserving—or that they simply forgot in the torrent of fiction that made up the Golden Age of Detection. The whole process reminds me of beachcombing.
That said, don’t imagine for a moment that you won’t enjoy yourself. Here you’ll find the first (and, I have no doubt, only) Agatha Christie that I was able to figure out before the last sentence. Here lurks one of those strange, dream-like tales Dorothy Sayers sometimes turned out when not writing about Lord Peter or Montague Egg. Another curio—a time capsule, really—Anthony Berkley’s brief Second World War yarn warns against the danger of loose lips. Christopher Bush’s “The Hampstead Murder” satisfies, even if (or maybe because) you can see the end before you get there. And Joseph Cummings’ “The Scarecrow Murders” achieves some authentic creepiness.
The first real treasure is John Dixon Carr’s “Grand Guignol”. A master of the impossible crime, this exceeds all expectations; let’s hope for more recordings of Carr’s many novels and stories. The second treasure is a series of six brief tales by six different authors, all working from the same premise: “One night, a man picked up an orange in the street; this saved his life”, the best (for my money) by John Rhode. If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, maybe this book isn’t your particular cup of Oolong.
Philip Bretherton turns in his usual excellent performance. Though somewhat taken aback by his American accents, the stories were too intriguing for that to pose more than a temporary barrier to enjoyment.
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