The Man in the Brown Suit

By: Agatha Christie

Narrated by: Nicola Barber, Graeme Malcolm

Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's Summary

First published in 1924, The Man in the Brown Suit is a thrilling adventure and murder mystery by Agatha Christie. The protagonist is Anne Beddingfield, the orphaned daughter of a famous archaeologist, who goes to live with her father’s solicitor and his wife in London. Anne is searching for an adventure and something exciting to occupy her time when she is witness to the sudden death of a man at Hyde Park Corner tube station when the man falls onto the electrified train track and is killed instantly. Anne’s suspicions are aroused when a man claiming to be a doctor quickly examines the body, pronounces him dead, and then leaves suddenly. Anne sees that he has dropped a piece of paper on the ground, and Anne takes the paper, insistent on investigating the matter further. Anne’s detective work takes her on board a ship sailing to South Africa, and soon she is caught up in a deadly mystery of stolen diamonds, bloody murders, kidnapping, government secrets, and violence at every turn. Christie’s engrossing tale is full of intrigue, a complex mystery, and a surprising romance, in one of the famed author’s most entertaining novels. 

This edition includes a biographical afterword.

Public Domain (P)2020 Multiple

My First Agatha Christie Novel

I fully understand how Ms. Agatha Christie's writings are classics. A woman way ahead of her time, the main character is not only adorable but she is daring and adventurous! Before I even realized it I was sucked in, a great mystery with many plot twists but a quick and surprising love story. The narrators did an excellent job of bringing each character to life and giving them personality.

Half Mystery-Thriller, Half Romantic Melodrama

A critic once remarked that Christie is "seldom at her best when she goes thrillerish on you”. And she’s not that much better when she goes romanceish. Our heroine Anne longs for the kind of perils she sees on the silver screen. Though she realizes, after experiencing a few perilous situations, that real life doesn’t always supply the dashing hero and hairs’-breadth rescue (at one point she even rescues herself), her narrative still throbs with the breathless expectancy and glutinous dialogue of the standard late 19th / early 20th century potboiler (“Don’t tempt me, Anne! Do you realize what I am?”)

Though an early work and typical of the period, it all could have been saved by a few knowing winks at the audience (“I know I’m being shamelessly melodramatic here but isn’t it fun?”). But no, there’s nary a blink—probably because Anne herself, and not an omniscient Christie, narrates the lion’s share of the story. And, while flashes of what would become Christie’s trademark humor lured me on, I wouldn’t waste time trying to figure this one out; the final hour or so presents a cavalcade of completely unanticipated (yet standard for the genre) revelation. Just as breathless as the text, Nicola Barber does little to alleviate the Audible Romance atmosphere, but the selections from Sir Eustace Pedlar’s diary, voiced by Graeme Malcolm, provide some welcome oases.

Love the descriptions of Africa

It was a treat to hear an Agatha Christie that I’d somehow missed for all these years. I loved the descriptions of the land itself in South Africa and what was then Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe. The rocks of the matobos - now Zimbabwe’s Matobo National Park, the color of the light, the 1st view of the water rising from the falls - all of that comes alive.

Unfortunately, so does the white colonial attitude that sees all African people as both “other” and lesser. Readers should be braced for this. However, if the “n” word was in the original manuscript, it has mercifully been removed.

The heroine veers from “delightful” to “master me, you masculine man.” So, well, brace for that, too.

However, unsettling gender and racial stereotypes withstanding, the plot is clever, the characters are vivid, the era and the landscape come alive.

The two narrators both did a superb job of rendering English character voices. The Afrikaans accent was a little off, but there were very few opportunities for it, so that wasn’t particularly detrimental.

Wonderful Read.

There's nothing better in life than listening to one of Agatha Christie's best novels and doing a jigsaw puzzle. It's only sad when its over. Great narration. Wonderful plot twists. Will be reading it again.

We'll written mystery

This story was fun, and kept my attention riveted the whole way through! The narrators were excellent!

Absolutely love it!

It was a very entertaining read, quick pace, funny, and intriguing.
I like the narrator's voice and pace, they really transported me from London all the way to Africa.

Lesser known treasure

Really enjoyed this book. I’m a long first time fan of Christie and probably did read this long ago, but there have been enough decades since I first discovered her to have forgotten a few. This is classic Christie in many ways, and I admit I did think the villain rather obvious, but it was great fun. And passing the story between two narrators worked well, better than I expected.

struggled

The multitude of names and aliases for each character made it hard to pay attention, as did the shift in plot without a segue.

I just found out that Agatha Christie was a bigot.

I recognize that she is from a different time when the world seemed smaller to people. Based on some of the things that I've read about her I think she was raised in a sort of white washed bubble.

I don't want to make excuses for people like that. But it seems to all boil down to ignorance or fear that drives that kind of thinking. Some cowardly, small-minded people feel intimidated and fearful of those who are different from them. It's true that her upbringing cultivated her writing talent. It also nurtured some of the racist and xenophobic views that she had about people.

Many stories can be updated to exclude negative language and racially biased rhetoric. Unfortunately I couldn't get through the story without hearing it.

I was particularly disgusted by the way she described the native people in South Africa. She referred to one woman as hideous. She even alluded to the fact that they were like dogs.

Yeah I guess her writing is ruined for me now that I know this. It's fine. I always thought she was overrated anyway.

Delightful

Perot-less tale of intrigue. First person narratives from a young adventuress mostly, with a few splices from a sage MP who parallels much of the happenings and provides good humor.
One of Christie’s better stories as it doesn’t bog in dated musings of the idle rich that would be largely lost on a modern audience. Yet a knowledge of South African geography and paleontology will add comprehension. The storyteller is earnest and of humble beginnings (and unbelievably unlustfull in her tellings. Christie is always proper in such matters.)
There are, however, quite a few characters to keep track of.
The readers are excellent with possibly overly light English accents.