Curtain

By: Agatha Christie

Narrated by: Hugh Fraser

Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's Summary

The house guests at Styles seemed perfectly pleasant to Captain Hastings. There was his own daughter, Judith; an inoffensive ornithologist called Norton; dashing Mr Allerton; brittle Miss Cole; Doctor Franklin and his fragile wife, Barbara; Nurse Craven; Colonel Luttrell and his charming wife, Daisy; and the charismatic Boyd-Carrington.

So Hastings was shocked to learn from Hercule Poirot's declaration that one of them was a five-times murderer. True, the aging detective was crippled with arthritis, but had his deductive instincts finally deserted him?

©1975 Agatha Christie Limited, a Chorion Company. All rights reserved (P)2003 HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, London UK

Critic Reviews

"Superb, vintage Christie." ( Sunday Express)
"First rate Christie: fast, complicated, wryly funny." ( Time)

Last but Certainly Not Least

Can't fault Hugh Fraser's reading. Loved the twist in this last Poirot. Christie, what an author! Will hear again and again and ...

The most gripping Poirot story

One of the best Poirot stories -- masterfully narrated by Hugh Fraser, who also performed the narrating character in the David Suchet series. This is among the Agatha Christie books which are not only masterfully woven crime mysteries but also not without literary merits. It revolves around real ethical and moral dilemmas -- a relatively rare thing in murder mysteries.

The end of Poirot

A poignant final case for Poirot aided by his faithful Hastings in which they re-investigate supposedly solved murders/deaths. In true Agatha Christie style it's intricately plotted and enjoyable to listen to owing much to being wonderfully well-read by Hugh Fraser (Hastings of the TV series).

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Fantastic

This is a fantastic book. The best thought out story, the best characters, the best twists, and an end you mustn't miss out on.

How clever Agatha was. And to finish like this.....wow.

Buy it, you will not be disappointed.

A clever piece of writing. Not too many characters so it is easy to follow. A contained story as it all happens in one place more or less.

I absolutely loved it. You will too.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Curtain

What can I say, Agatha Christie out did herself, in this final case, the suspense intrigue, the amount of suspects that it could have been it was amazing, I was completely dumbfounded when I came to the end and the culprit was announced.
When you start the book you are given a lot of information and you may want to give up but don't you'll regret it if you do.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Holmes resurrected.

unlike conan doyle, agatha has laid her fictional Detective Hercle to a permanant Heavenly home. there will never be annother Hercule.

Always the best

I love Agatha Christie's books, especially the Poirot's series. He is a great character and with this book I like him more.

Too cynical for me.

Although the plot is as ingenious and improbable as usual, this novel is disturbingly nihilistic and lack the tongue in cheek tone that provides a certain charm to Christie’s tales of murder amongst the parasitic classes. The characters seem to have been reading Nietzsche uncritically, or at least the more intellectual amongst them, which gives me an aftertaste of concern for their subsequent lives (and that’s just those who haven’t killed anyone in this book!)
Styles Court, setting for the first Poirot novel, become a sinister Fawlty Towers, with similar malevolence but lacking the comic relief of Manuel, the waiter. Christie often uses servants as objects of ridicule, less affectionately than in Fawlty Towers, but she doesn’t even relieve tension in this book with that dubious device.
I don’t like this book at all, though it has the attraction of being Poirot’s swan song. I can see why she kept it hidden for so long after she wrote it - a bitter story, maybe closer to her personal philosophy than the requirements of the “Christie brand” of her earlier career - but certain to make a fat fortune once she was too old to write and too old to care.

thrilling

excelently read Hugh Fraser is fab at the different voices the story wow superb ending

A corrective experience for fans of the TV series'

I am not an avid Christie reader, but I am an avid Christie fan. I grew up watching the old Joan Hickson Marple movies (pocket full of rye used to scare the living daylights out of me), and the early series of the David Suchet tv adaptation of Poirot.



But as the years went on, my love for the old Christie books had changed to horror at the most recent adaptations. After years of waiting for a David Suchet adaptation to replace the awkward accent and strange paleness of Albert Finny, I got a Murder on the Orient Express which I could hardly recognize.



The new trend of adaptation, that of deviating heavily from Christie's story, is painful for someone who was used to the quality of the early series. I spent quite a lot of time waiting for the more iconic tales to swing around, and now that they have, they are horrible to behold.



Here, therefore, is a chance for us fans of the older series, fans of the time when Agatha Christie's Poirot was a good show to watch, one that didn't make you cringe at the obvious changes (so obvious, a non-reader can spot them), to experience something of the "Curtain" experience which we deserve, but will never get.



Enjoy, my friends, this delightful performance by Hugh Fraser (Who does a lovely David Suchet impersonation, btw), and dream of what might have been.



- G

4 of 8 people found this review helpful

my first audiobook

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I felt that if this was it I would not bother to buy another- then I began to be more adventurous in my choices

Any additional comments?

fun book but the narrators confused me as i preferred the TV series to the books and the voices seemed to be the wrong people. I think Agatha has been so well presented on screen the books fade into the background for me

0 of 2 people found this review helpful