Margaret

Elizabeth Peters is an excellent author. Unfortunately, her excessive use of blasphemy in this book was just too much for me. I wish her vocabulary was as captivating as her plots are.

One of Christie's better plots. It is slightly harder to pick up on the key bit of information needed to solve the murder in audible format compared to print, but still worth listening to. The narrator is excellent. She sounds enough like Judi Dench that I looked to see if it was her.

Considering the word "spy" is in the title, I thought this would be intriguing and adventurous. It's not. I'm 4 hours into the book and it is so uninteresting that I have to remind myself to start listening again. I find the main character to be rather flat and her best friend shallow. The most exciting thing so far is several dull conversations about sex. I love a good, clean, cozy mystery, but this is just a snooze in my opinion. As for the narrator, most of the voices are done rather well (especially the grandfather's) but Belinda's is whiny and grating. So much so that I contemplated not listening anymore when she came along. Audible bills this book as a chance to "mingle" with Queen Mary. Unfortunately, she has only been in it for about 10 minutes so far. I'm just not impressed and won't bother with the rest of the series. I'll go back to mysteries written before the 1960's.