The Man in the Brown Suit
I 99.9% listened to this book because I love the person reading it. Nicola Barber enchanted me with her performance for one of Tchaikovsky’s earlier works, and seeing as how this book was provided for free as part of Audible’s services, I decided to go for it.
Its also been so long since I’ve read one of Agatha Christie’s books that everything in it was fresh again. Set in an age not too long after the Great War, it introduces our heroine, Anne Beddingfeld only after a lengthy intro. The book is a bit of classic mystery, where the reader is given a chance to try to solve the mystery, but only if they pay attention to every bit of dialogue and clue. Its a bit of a world spanning adventure, where the heroine tries to solve both a mystery and save the love of her life and you go from London, to various towns and cities in Africa.
The principal delight of any of Agatha Christie’s books however, is not in the mystery, or even the characters, but the dialogue and how rich that dialogue is. Not quite victorian by their usage, but every bit as prim and proper in their usage, and incredibly polite and aristocratic even when they are rude and crass. Its as much a character as any of the other characters in the book.
The narration is every bit like I imagined it would be, and Ms Barber is amazing because she’s great at conversations and the book is about 80% conversations. I’d say unless you cannot stand audiobooks to actually listen to the book rather than read it. Its also got me on a kick to do more mystery novels and I’ll doubtless get into that kick for a bit.
Highly recommended if you can get Nicola Barber’s audiobook of it, otherwise deduct a star for 3 stars.