Customer Reviews

The Clocks: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Audio Editions Mystery Masters)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had to laugh when I read the previous reviewer's comment that The Clocks was in the top 20% of Christie's works. I'd have to put it in the bottom 20%. It's a wildly improbable mystery story.

However..Robin Bailey's reading of the book is a joy to listen to. Americans may be familiar with Robin Bailey as Charters in Charters & Caldicott, a Mystery! miniseries that aired 20 years or so.

Bailey does voices really well, and even if you don't think much of the mystery, you'll enjoy it because of the reading.

BP
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I love listening to audiobooks "on the road" as well as while washing dishes for hours at a time (I'm a very bad dish washer), and this one acutely held my attention. Agatha Christie wrote no shortage of losers (I've read every book and play that she ever wrote, which is more than 80) but I place this one in her top twenty percent.

A young lady typist is sent to a house of a blind woman by her prickly boss (aka "Sandy Cat") and the poor girl finds a man's body lying in the floor. She runs out the door, shrieking, to the aide of a passer-by (who just happens to be a covert agent of the British government!) who takes her side when the police inspector (a friend of his) suspects the girl of being involved in the death. But there is the additional laundry list of close neighbors who are all equally suspicious. I'll stop there to avoid a spoiler.

Poirot is barely part of the mystery, I would guess that Christie stuck him in the last third of the story as a marketing afterthought, but this does not harm the larger work. The reader does a fine job which is often the key element of a decent audiobook. The story line is quite coherent and, while this one is not what I would call "killer", it still earns the full 5 stars.

A final note, this is primarily a murder mystery with a side story of espionage, a trick that Christie often practiced, only not usually so shrewdly as she did in this particular episode.