Murder At The Vicarage

Agatha Christie

Sep 2010 · BBC Digital Audio · Narrated by Full Cast, Imelda Staunton, June Whitfield, and Nigel Davenport

About this audiobook

In the sleepy little English country village of St Mary Mead, all is not as it seems. Under a seemingly peaceful exterior lurks intrigue, guilt, deception - and murder. Colonel Protheroe, local magistrate and overbearing landowner, is the most detested man in the village. Everyone, even the vicar, wishes he were dead. And very soon he is - shot in the head in the vicar's own study. A visiting artist confesses to the murder, but residents saw him elsewhere at the time the Colonel was shot. If he didn't do it, who did? Is he protecting the wife whom he loves? Faced with a surfeit of suspects, only the inscrutable Miss Marple can unravel the tangled web of clues. A trap is set, and Miss Marple's theory is put to the test when the true killer is finally unmasked. This full-cast dramatisation of Agatha Christie's very first Miss Marple mystery stars June Whitfield as the indomitable amateur detective, with Imelda Staunton and Nigel Davenport.

About the author

Agatha Christie, the acknowledged ‘Queen of Crime' (The Observer) was born in Torquay in 1890. During the First World War she worked as a hospital dispenser, and it was here that she gleaned the working knowledge of various poisons that was to prove so useful in her detective stories.

Her first novel was The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which introduced Hercule Poirot to the world. This was published in 1920 (although in fact she had written it during the war) and was followed over the next six years by four more detective novels and a short story collection. However, it was not until the publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd that Agatha Christie’s reputation was firmly established. This novel, with its complex plot and genuinely shocking conclusion, attracted considerable public attention and has since been acknowledged by many experts as a masterpiece. In 1930 the sharp-witted spinster sleuth Miss Marple made her first appearance in The Murder at the Vicarage. In all, Agatha Christie published over 80 novels and short story collections.

The brilliance of Christie’s plots, and her enduring appeal, have led to several dramatisations of her work on radio, television and film. In 1930 she was one of a number of crime writers asked to contribute a chapter to a mystery, Behind the Screen, that was broadcast on BBC radio on 21st June that year. More recently, June Whitfield portrayed Miss Marple on BBC Radio 4, whilst John Moffat starred as Hercule Poirot. On screen, Peter Ustinov, David Suchet, Margaret Rutherford, Joan Hickson, Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie have all memorably played Agatha Christie’s famous sleuths.

As her play The Mousetrap (the longest-running play in the history of theatre) testifies, Agatha Christie’s detective stories are likely to appeal for a long time to come.

Agatha Christie was awarded a CBE in 1956 and was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1971. She died in 1976.