Audio - Crime 2002

File Updated: 22/03/2004

Tangled Web UK: New Audio - Crime Titles 2002

Iain Banks Dead Air Published June 2003 by ISIS at Ł20.99 Buy direct from ISIS: freephone order number (UK) 0800 731 5637 or click on the Order button to visit their website N.B. P&P Ł2.50 or Ł3.50 for two or more titles
Read by Kenny Blyth
A couple of ice cubes, first, then the apple that really started it all.
In a loft apartment in London’s East End, cool but doomed, demolition and redevelopment slated for the following week, Ken Nott, attending a midweek wedding lunch, starts dropping stuff off the roof towards the deserted car park a hundred feet below. Other guests join in and soon half the contents of the flat are following the fruit towards the pitted tarmac ... just as mobiles start to ring, and the apartment’s remaining TV is turned on, because apparently a plane has just crashed into the World Trade Centre ...
lain Banks’ daring new novel accelerates through one man’s political obsessions, manic media manipulations and wildly dangerous private life.
Kenny Blyth is from Peebles in the Scottish Borders. He trained at Queen Maragaret’s college in Edinburgh, and upon graduating, won the BBC Radio Carleton Hobbs Bursary award 2000. he spent 9 months on the BBC Radio Drama company, being involved in over one hundred radio plays. He continues to enjoy working in radio, voice-overs and television.
12 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 13 hrs 5 mins
About The Author
lain Banks was born in Fife in 1954. An only child, his father was an Admiralty officer and his mother a professional ice skater. At Stirling University, he read English Literature with Philosophy and Psychology and he now holds honorary doctorates from that university and St. Andrews. During vacations, he took odd jobs as a hospital porter, estate worker, pier porter (on Clydeside docks), road worker, dustman and gardener. He now lives with his wife in Fife, in a house overlooking the Forth Bridge.
lain Banks had written several novels (mostly science fiction), before submitting The Wasp Factory to Macmillan Publishers. It was picked out of the publisher’s ‘slush pile’ as an unsolicited manuscript and published in 1984 (on lain’s 30th birthday).
The critical reaction varied widely from the Daily Telegraph ‘one of the most brilliant first novels I have come across for some time’ and the Financial Times, ‘A Gothic horror story of quite exceptional quality ...an outstandingly good read,’ to the Irish Times ‘It is a sick, sick world when the confidence and investment of an astute firm of publishers is justified by a work of unparalleled depravity’. The Mail on Sunday concluded ‘If a nastier, more vicious or distasteful novel appears this spring, I shall be surprised. But there is unlikely to be a better one either.’
After the publication of two further mainstream novels, Walking on Glass and The Bridge, Banks’ published his first science fiction novel, Consider Phlebas. In this novel, he introduced his socialist utopia, The Culture, which has featured in many of his SF novels in various guises. Banks took the opportunity of crossing genres to put back into his name the middle initial ‘M’ for Menzies, his family name.
A regular fixture on the bestseller lists, lain Banks’ novels have also been adapted variously: The Wasp Factory for theatre, Complicity for film and The Crow Road for television in a successful four-part BBC television series (now video), starring Joseph McFadden, Bill Paterson and Peter Capaldi. Espedair Street was serialised on BBC Radio Four early in 1998, with John Gordon Sinclair as Weird, Paul Gambuccini narrating and the songs and music written by Banks himself. In 1997, composer Gary Lloyd released a CD of music based around The Bridge that included passages from the book read by lain Banks. In 1993, Granta chose lain Banks as one of the Best of Young British Novelists.
A compilation of lain’s favourite records was released by EMI on CD in March 1999 as part of the Emi Songbook Series. Called Personal Effects, the songs range from Bowie to The Sex Pistols and from Radiohead to Neneh Cherry.
The Times has acclaimed lain Banks `the most imaginative British novelist of his generation’.
lain Banks lives in fife, Scotland.

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Jo Bannister Sins of the Heart Published January 2003 by Soundings at Ł16.99 Buy direct from Soundings: order number (UK) 0191 253 4155 N.B. P&P Ł2.50 or Ł3.50 for two or more titles
Read by Marie McCarthy
Liz Graham and Cal Donovan investigate
The first victim is a young prostitute - an easy, accessible target for a killer’s lust. The second victim is another young girl. The killer is skilled, seasoned, enjoying himself.
The detective team of Liz Graham and Cal Donovan is put on the case as suspicion falls on a charismatic travelling evangelist staging a week-long revival meeting. Who would benefit from a town’s tragedies more than he? Oddly, the surfacing of a friend, long believed dead, from Donovan’s childhood may have some connection. Among them all, wearing a mask of decency, a killer is once again deciding who lives and who dies, for the most passionate of motives . . . and by the most dispassionate of means.
Marie McCarthy has worked extensively in repertory at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre, Liverpool Playhouse, Churchill Theatre and The Salisbury Playhouse. Her West End credits include Dangerous Obsession, Beauty and the Beast, and London Cuckolds. She also appeared in the fifth series of Red Dwarf for BBC 2 and worked on a short film entitled The Bar. Radio credits include Waiting and Double and Quits for LBC.
7 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 8 hrs
About The Author
Jo Bannister was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, and grew up in Birmingham, Nottingham and Bangor, Northern Ireland. After leaving school at sixteen, she joined the County Down Spectator as a office junior, leaving as editor in 1988 to pursue her career as an author. She has won several awards for her writing, including recognition from the Royal Society of Arts and the British Press Awards. She is also the author of the popular police series featuring Frank Shapiro, Liz Graham and Cal Donovan.
Her interests are riding and archaeology. She lives in Northern Ireland

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Christopher Brookmyre Quite Ugly One Morning Published August 2003 by ISIS at Ł17.99 Buy direct from ISIS: freephone order number (UK) 0800 731 5637 or click on the Order button to visit their website N.B. P&P Ł2.50 or Ł3.50 for two or more titles
Read by Kenny Blyth
Yeah, yeah, the usual. A crime. A corpse. A killer. Heard it. Except this stiff happens to be a Ponsonby, scion of a venerable Edinburgh medical clan, and the manner of his death speaks of unspeakable things. Why is the body displayed like a slice of beef? How come his hands are digitally challenged?
A post-Thatcherite nightmare of frightening plausibility, Quite Ugly One Morning is a wickedly entertaining and vivacious thriller, laced with acerbic wit, cracking dialogue and villains both reputed and shell-suited.
‘Very violent, very funny. A comedy with political edge, which you take gleefully in one gulp’ Literary Review
Kenny Blyth is from Peebles in the Scottish Borders. He trained at Queen Maragaret’s college in Edinburgh, and upon graduating, won the BBC Radio Carleton Hobbs Bursary award 2000. he spent 9 months on the BBC Radio Drama company, being involved in over one hundred radio plays. He continues to enjoy working in radio, voice-overs and television.
6 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 7 hrs 10 mins
About The Author
in his own words… The important stuff:
Christopher Brookmyre first hit the British bookshelves in the summer of 1996 with Quite Ugly One Morning, a scurrilous satire on the then Conservative government’s NHS reforms. The book won the inaugural Critics’ First Blood award for the best first crime novel of the year, but is destined to be remembered principally for featuring a huge jobbie on a mantelpiece in its opening chapter.
Its sequel, Country Of The Blind, (out in paperback this June) provided a second outing for morally ambiguous uber-hack Jack Parlabane, this time tenaciously probing who killed media-mogul Roland Voss (not least because Parlabane would have quite liked to do it himself).
Brookmyre’s third novel, the Los Angeles-set Not The End Of The World, will be published in hardback in July, taking on millennial hysteria, Christian fundamentalism, pornography, cheesy b-movies and bad hair. It has been described as “gloriously unsound” and is extremely unlikely to be among the Daily Mail’s books of the year.
The less important stuff:
Christopher Brookmyre was born in Glasgow in 1968, and has worked as a journalist in London, Los Angeles and Edinburgh, contributing to Screen International, The Scotsman, the Edinburgh Evening News and The Absolute Game. Contrary to the official version, Quite Ugly One Morning was in fact his fourth novel, but the first one to find a publisher. It followed two veritable duffers and a more promising third, which has subsequently been optioned for a film adaptation. He is married with no parasitic spawn.
The downright trivia (you have been warned):
Religion: St Mirren supporter since age eight. Attended Hammarby game. Underwent lengthy counseling. Also suffers from Hibby sympathies due to many years’ residence near Easter Road. Open to financial offers not to support your team as well. Detests the Old Firm with a passion, but feels sorry for their supporters, who presumably seek to associate themselves with the might of these spoiled giants to compensate for the desolate nothingness that is their lives.
Influence and inspiration (because someone always asks): Bill Hicks, Billy Connolly, Billy Franks, Robertson Davies, Jeff Torrington, Douglas Adams, Carl Hiaasen, Iain Banks, Terry Gilliam, Joel Silver, James Cameron, Warren Zevon, Manic Street Preachers, Indigo Girls, Teenage Fanclub, Mike Scott, Mutton Birds, The Skids …
Email: chrisb@cbrook.globalnet.co.uk
Christopher Brookmyre's first novel, Quite Ugly One Morning, won him the inaugural Fresh Blood Award for the best debut crime novel and held off Iain Banks as Scotland's number one bestseller in paperback. By the time his second, County of the Blind, was published, the media hailed Brookmyre as a star of the Scottish literati (with Warner and Welsh) and rewarded him with the dubious distinction of inventing tartan noir. His third novel Not the End of the World, is a story of fundamental religion and millennial hysteria with a heavy dose of Hollywood's porn industry thrown in.
Quite Ugly One Morning and County of the Blind have both been optioned for film and John Hannah (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Macallum) is also in the running to play the hero of the books, Jack Parlabane, hard-bitten journalist.
Hannah is also working on a screen adaptation of an unpublished novel by Brookmyre. Foreign translations are underway but the Glaswegian slang is proving a bit of a hurdle. With four published novels to his name, Christopher Brookmyre has yet to celebrate his 30th birthday. He lives in Aberdeen.

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Christopher Brookmyre The Sacred Art of Stealing Published April 2003 by ISIS at Ł18.99 Buy direct from ISIS: freephone order number (UK) 0800 731 5637 or click on the Order button to visit their website N.B. P&P Ł2.50 or Ł3.50 for two or more titles
Read by Lesley Mackie
The press tend to talk about bank robberies as daring, ingenious or audacious, never as ‘Dadaist’, even the ones who know what ‘Dadaist’ means. But how else does one explain choreographed dancing gunmen in Buchanan Street, or the surreal methods they use to stay one step ahead of the cops?
Angelique do Xavia is no art critic, but she is a connoisseur of crooks, and she’s sure that this heist isn’t the work of the usual sawn-offs-and-black-tights criminal. It’s her job to hunt this unique species of thief to extinction - though the fact that it’s not just his m.o. that’s cute might prove a distraction.
‘Christopher Brookmyre is a genius’ Mirror
Born in Dundee and trained at the Royal Scottish Academy in Glasgow, Lesley won a Laurence Olivier Award in 1986 for her portrayal of Judy Garland in the musical play Judy. Her earliest appearances were opposite Billy Connolly in The Great Northern Welly-Boot Show and The Wicker Man, for which she recorded the title song. Lesley lives in Scotland with her two children and husband, actor Terry Wale.
A Londoner by birth, Terry Wale made his debut as a professional actor at the age of thirteen. He has been a member of the RSC and the National Theatre Company. He is also a director and writer, having won a London Theatre Critics Award nomination for his musical play Judy.
9 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 11 hrs 20 mins
About The Author
in his own words… The important stuff:
Christopher Brookmyre first hit the British bookshelves in the summer of 1996 with Quite Ugly One Morning, a scurrilous satire on the then Conservative government’s NHS reforms. The book won the inaugural Critics’ First Blood award for the best first crime novel of the year, but is destined to be remembered principally for featuring a huge jobbie on a mantelpiece in its opening chapter.
Its sequel, Country Of The Blind, (out in paperback this June) provided a second outing for morally ambiguous uber-hack Jack Parlabane, this time tenaciously probing who killed media-mogul Roland Voss (not least because Parlabane would have quite liked to do it himself).
Brookmyre’s third novel, the Los Angeles-set Not The End Of The World, will be published in hardback in July, taking on millennial hysteria, Christian fundamentalism, pornography, cheesy b-movies and bad hair. It has been described as “gloriously unsound” and is extremely unlikely to be among the Daily Mail’s books of the year.
The less important stuff:
Christopher Brookmyre was born in Glasgow in 1968, and has worked as a journalist in London, Los Angeles and Edinburgh, contributing to Screen International, The Scotsman, the Edinburgh Evening News and The Absolute Game. Contrary to the official version, Quite Ugly One Morning was in fact his fourth novel, but the first one to find a publisher. It followed two veritable duffers and a more promising third, which has subsequently been optioned for a film adaptation. He is married with no parasitic spawn.
The downright trivia (you have been warned):
Religion: St Mirren supporter since age eight. Attended Hammarby game. Underwent lengthy counseling. Also suffers from Hibby sympathies due to many years’ residence near Easter Road. Open to financial offers not to support your team as well. Detests the Old Firm with a passion, but feels sorry for their supporters, who presumably seek to associate themselves with the might of these spoiled giants to compensate for the desolate nothingness that is their lives.
Influence and inspiration (because someone always asks): Bill Hicks, Billy Connolly, Billy Franks, Robertson Davies, Jeff Torrington, Douglas Adams, Carl Hiaasen, Iain Banks, Terry Gilliam, Joel Silver, James Cameron, Warren Zevon, Manic Street Preachers, Indigo Girls, Teenage Fanclub, Mike Scott, Mutton Birds, The Skids …
Email: chrisb@cbrook.globalnet.co.uk
Christopher Brookmyre's first novel, Quite Ugly One Morning, won him the inaugural Fresh Blood Award for the best debut crime novel and held off Iain Banks as Scotland's number one bestseller in paperback. By the time his second, County of the Blind, was published, the media hailed Brookmyre as a star of the Scottish literati (with Warner and Welsh) and rewarded him with the dubious distinction of inventing tartan noir. His third novel Not the End of the World, is a story of fundamental religion and millennial hysteria with a heavy dose of Hollywood's porn industry thrown in.
Quite Ugly One Morning and County of the Blind have both been optioned for film and John Hannah (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Macallum) is also in the running to play the hero of the books, Jack Parlabane, hard-bitten journalist.
Hannah is also working on a screen adaptation of an unpublished novel by Brookmyre. Foreign translations are underway but the Glaswegian slang is proving a bit of a hurdle. With four published novels to his name, Christopher Brookmyre has yet to celebrate his 30th birthday. He lives in Aberdeen.

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Gwendoline Butler Coffin and the Paper Man Published August 2003 by Soundings at Ł17.99 Buy direct from Soundings: order number (UK) 0191 253 4155 N.B. P&P Ł2.50 or Ł3.50 for two or more titles
Read by Terry Wale
When sixteen-year-old Anna Mary Kinver is raped and stabbed, a former psychiatric patient, covered with blood, is picked up for questioning and subsequently let go.
Soon after, John Coffin, chief commander of the Docklands district, receives the first in a series of notes. The anonymous letter writer, calling himself ‘the Paper Man’, promises more bodies if Anna Mary’s killer is not caught.
As the case goes unsolved, more bodies turn up. Who is the Paper Man? What is his relationship to Anna Mary and the other victims? And how many times will he strike before Coffin discovers his identity, or Anna Mary’s killer?
‘Butler has the light touch of a master’ Booklist
A Londoner by birth, Terry made his debut as a professional actor at the age of thirteen. He has been a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre Company. He is also a director and writer, having won a London Theatre Critics Award nomination for his musical play Judy. Terry now lives in Scotland with his wife, actress Lesley Mackie, and their two children.
6 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 7 hrs
About The Author
Gwendoline Butler is one of the most universally praised of English mystery authors, under both her own name and that of Jennie Melville, and has written over fifty novels under both names. Educated at Haberdashers she read history at Oxford, later marrying Dr Lionel Butler, Principal of Royal Holloway College. She has one daughter.
Gwendoline Butler's crime novels are hugely popular in both Britain and the United States, and her many awards include the Crime Writers' Association's Silver Dagger. She was selected as being one of the top two hundred crime writers in the world by The Times and her Coffin series has now been optioned for television. There are twenty-four John Coffin mysteries, eighteen Charmian Daniels mysteries and ten non-series thrillers in print in over twenty countries world wide. Only in her native England are so few of her books available in paperback!
Gwendoline Butler is a Londoner, and was born in a part of South London for which she still has a tremendous affection, and which, under the guise of the Second City of London, is the setting for her Coffin novels, its policing being in the capable hands of Commander John Coffin whose cases now span more than fifteen titles. John Coffin made his first appearance in Death Lives Next Door, first published in 1960 and reissued as a title in The Crime Club Diamond Jubilee Collection in 1990. Other Coffin titles include Coffin on the Water, his baptismal case on demob in 1946; Coffin in Fashion, set in the swinging 'sixties with a lively rag trade background; Coffin Underground, which takes place in 1978 when the South London area is in transition and subject to some very dangerous games; and Coffin in the Black Museum and Coffin and the Paper Man with Coffin established in the heart of the old Docklands where crime is one of the few things to resist the process of gentrification.
Gwendoline Butler also writes as Jennie Melville

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Sarah Caudwell Thus Was Adonis Murdered Published April 2003 by ISIS at Ł16.99 Buy direct from ISIS: freephone order number (UK) 0800 731 5637 or click on the Order button to visit their website N.B. P&P Ł2.50 or Ł3.50 for two or more titles
Read by Eva Haddon
For young barrister Julia Larwood, it was to be a holiday of romance as well as flight from the tax man; in short, an Art Lover’s Tour of Italy. Reduced to near penury by the Inland Revenue, Julia could hardly afford such luxury but she’d be in hock to the Revenue either way so why not? But poor, deluded Julia - how could she have known that the ravishing Art Lover for whom she had conceived a fatal passion was himself an employee of the Inland Revenue? Or that her hard-won night of passion would end in murder with her personal, inscribed copy of the current Finance Act found lying a few feet away from the corpse.
‘Witty, clever . . . an elaborately plotted . . . charming story’ Publishers Weekly
Eva Haddon trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama before joining the B.B.C. Drama Company. She has worked extensively in theatre, television, and in over 500 radio plays and readings. These include The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch, Pride of the Peacock by Victoria Holt and Holiday with Violence by Ellis Peters. Eva was also the voice of Medea in the film Jason and the Argonauts.
6 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 8 hrs 5 mins
About The Author
Sarah Caudwell studied law at St Anne’s College, Oxford, and practised as a barrister for several years in Lincoln’s Inn. She later specialized in international tax planning at a major London bank, and at the same time started to write. She died of cancer in January 2000, aged 60.

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Sarah Caudwell The Shortest Way to Hades Published January 2003 by ISIS at Ł16.99 Buy direct from ISIS: freephone order number (UK) 0800 731 5637 or click on the Order button to visit their website N.B. P&P Ł2.50 or Ł3.50 for two or more titles
Read by Eva Haddon
It seemed the perfect way to avoid three million in taxes on a five-million-pound estate: change the Trust arrangement. Everyone in the family agreed to support the heiress, Camilla Galloway, in her court petition - except dreary cousin Deirdre, who suddenly demanded a small fortune for her signature. Then Dreary Deirdre has a terrible accident which is the moment when the London barristers handling the trust - Cantrip, Selena, Ragwort and Julia -decide to summon their Oxford mentor Professor Hilary Tamar to Lincoln’s Inn.
And when deadly accidents in the family escalate, Hilary is dispatched on the most perilous quest of all: to find the truth and unmask the killer . . .
‘An utterly delightful book . . . it will be irresistible to all who enjoy polished, civilised prose’ New York Times
Eva Haddon trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama before joining the B.B.C. Drama Company. She has worked extensively in theatre, television, and in over 500 radio plays and readings. These include The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch, Pride of the Peacock by Victoria Holt and Holiday with Violence by Ellis Peters. Eva was also the voice of Medea in the film Jason and the Argonauts.
6 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 6 hrs 50 mins
About The Author
Sarah Caudwell studied law at St Anne’s College, Oxford, and practised as a barrister for several years in Lincoln’s Inn. She later specialized in international tax planning at a major London bank, and at the same time started to write. She died of cancer in January 2000, aged 60.

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Lee Child Persuader Published September 2003 by Soundings at Ł19.99 Buy direct from Soundings: order number (UK) 0191 253 4155 N.B. P&P Ł2.50 or Ł3.50 for two or more titles
Read by Dick Hill
Never forgive. Never forget. That’s Jack Reacher’s standard operating procedure. Francis Xavier Quinn was the worst guy he had ever met. He had done truly unforgivable things. Reacher was glad to know he was dead until he sees him, alive and well, riding in a limousine outside Boston’s Symphony Hall.
Never apologise. Never explain. When Reacher witnesses a brutal attempt to kidnap a terrified young student on a New England campus, he takes the law into his own hands. That’s his way, after all. Only this time, a cop dies, and Reacher doesn’t stick around to explain. Has he lost his sense of right and wrong? Just because this time, it’s personal?
Another heartstopping page-turner brings back Child’s much-loved hero, Jack Reacher, at his pragmatic and uncompromising best.
‘A hero in the Dirty Harry style’ Sunday Telegraph
Dick Hill has recorded everything from sci-fi to non-fiction. In 1997, Hill received three nominations for best audiobook recording, a reflection of his character driven style, which he credits to a lifetime of observing and enjoying people. Hill has two grown children, and lives, loves gardens, and cooks with his talented wife, Susie Breck (another highly regarded audiobook narrator) in a medium-sized Midwestern town.
9 Cassettes Running Time: 14 hrs
About The Author
Lee Child was born in the industrial Midlands. He studied law, and worked for many years in commercial television. He has recently moved with his wife and daughter from Cumbria to New York State. His first two Reacher novels, Killing Floor and Die Trying, were both published by Bantam Press. Killing Floor was recently awarded the Anthony Award in America for the best first novel.

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Agatha Christie The Secret of Chimneys Published November 2003 by HarperCollins Audio at Ł9.99 ISBN: 0-00-717051 3
Read by Hugh Fraser
Little did Anthony Cade suspect that a simple errand on behalf of a friend would make him the centrepiece of a murderous international conspiracy. Someone would stop at nothing to prevent the monarchy being restored in faraway Herzoslovakia.
The combined forces of Scotland Yard and the French Surete can do no better than go in circles - until the final murder at Chimneys, the great country estate that yields up an amazing secret...
This light-hearted thriller is the first to feature Superintendent Battle and `Bundle` Brent.
Another capital detective story, which will keep the reader guessing until the very end’ Literary Review
Hugh Fraser plays Captain Hastings in the popular TV series
4 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 7 hrs 45 mins
About The Author
Agatha Christie at work

Agatha Christie was born in Torquay in 1890 and became, quite simply, the best-selling novelist in history. She wrote 80 crime mysteries and collections, and saw her work translated into more languages than Shakespeare. Her enduring success, enhanced by many film and TV adaptations, is a tribute to the timeless appeal of her characters and the unequalled ingenuity of her plots.
Agatha Christie says: 'I was born in Devonshire, and had a very happy childhood with practically no lessons and lots of time to roam about the garden and imagine things. It was my mother who told me to write. She was a woman of great charm and great character, and was always convinced that her children could do anything! I was in bed with a bad cold and she said, "You'd better write a short story. Nonsense, don't say you can't! Of course you can!"
'For some years I enjoyed myself very much writing stories of unrelieved gloom where most of the characters died. Also a good deal of poetry and a novel with an impossible number of characters in it. Then I thought it would be fun to try and write a detective story. It was an exciting day when The Mysterious Affair at Styles was accepted and published. I was working as a dispenser at a Red Cross Hospital during the First World War when I wrote it.
'As for my tastes, I enjoy my food, hate the taste of any kind of alcohol, have tried and tried to like smoking, but can't manage it. I adore flowers, am crazy about the sea, love the theatre, but am bored to death by the talkies (and am very stupid at following them), loathe wireless and all loud noises, dislike living in cities. I do a lot of travelling, mostly in the Near East, and have a great love of the desert.'
In 1950 Agatha Christie celebrated the publication of her fiftieth detective novel. Messages of congratulation came to her from many eminent people, including Mr C. R. Attlee, then Prime Minister, who wrote: "I admire and delight in the ingenuity of Agatha Christie's mind and in her capacity to keep a secret until she is ready to divulge it. And I admire, also, another of her qualities, one that is not always possessed by those who produce detective stories, her ability clearly and simply to write the English language."
Born in Torquay, she was encouraged to write by Eden Phillpotts, the famous Devonshire playwright; her first book was rejected by several publishers before it was published in 1920. The wife of a distinguished archaeologist (Professor Max Mallowan of Lodon University), she assisted him in his excavations in Iraq, where he made remarkable discoveries. They lived in a Georgian house overlooking the River Dart.

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Agatha Christie Sparkling Cyanide Published November 2003 by HarperCollins Audio at Ł13.00 ISBN: 0-00-717045 9
Read by Hugh Fraser
Complete and Unabridged
Six people sit down to a sumptuous meal at a table laid for seven. In front of the empty place is a sprig of rosemary -`rosemary for remembrance’. A strange sentiment considering no-one is likely to forget the night, exactly a year ago, that Rosemary Barton - her beautiful face unrecognisable as it convulsed in pain and horror - died at exactly the same table.
But then Rosemary had always been memorable she had the ability to arouse strong passions in most people she met. In one case, strong enough to kill…
‘The denouement will probably come as a surprise to nine readers out of ten’ New York Times
Hugh Fraser plays Captain Hastings in the popular TV series
4 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 6 hrs 30 mins
About The Author
Agatha Christie at work

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Agatha Christie The Body in the Library Published November 2003 by HarperCollins Audio at Ł15.99 ISBN: 0-00-717568 X
Read by Stephanie Cole
CD Version - Complete and Unabridged
It’s seven in the morning. The Bantrys wake to find the body of a young woman in their library. She is wearing evening dress and heavy make-up, which is now smeared across her cheeks.
But who is she? How did she get there? And what is the inflection with another dead girl, whose charred remains are later discovered in an abandoned quarry? The respectable Bantrys invite Miss Marple to solve the mystery... before tongues start to wag.
‘The best opening I ever wrote’ Agatha Christie
‘Professional detectives are no match for elderly spinsters… it is hard not to be impressed.’ Times Literary Supplement
5 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 5 hrs 22 mins
About The Author
Agatha Christie at work

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