Ep 1: Murder is Easy Podcast with Joe Nocera cover art

Ep 1: Murder is Easy

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Ep 1: Murder is Easy

By: Blanchard House
Narrated by: Joe Nocera
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It’s May 1922 and Major Herbert Armstrong is executed for poisoning his wife - but is he innocent? The story becomes global news and inspires the most successful writer of all time, Agatha Christie.

©2023 Blanchard House (P)2023 Audible, Ltd.
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A mix of Agatha Christie, history, and true crime, all well presented. A fun and interesting dive into a crime I didn’t know much about .
Definitely recommend

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I think this very entertaining podcast, if not that clearly, do does its job linking the Armstrong case with Agatha Christie. It ends showing a context that contradicts the notion that mrs Christie’s fiction is far-fetched, ridiculous or even imposible. Here we can vividly feel that her source material, the world she placed her stories, was grounded. Her fictional imagery was deeply based in reality, in a much more serious and less folkloric way as it could appear nowadays. After all, the 20s Europe was a world where arsenic was known as poudre de succession – “inheritance powder” by the French!

Armstrong in Christie’s work:
What is a little dissapointing that the podcast fails to show the fact that mrs Christie mentions Armstrong as a murderer in several occasions in her books:

In Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (1934)
“Oh! but murderers are always frightfully rash. The more murders they do, the more murders they want to do.”
“Like The Third Bloodstain,” said Bobby, remembering one of his favourite works of fiction.
“Yes, and in real life, too—Smith and his wives and Armstrong and people.”

In The Labours of Hercules (1947):
“There have been cases like it before, of course,” said Miss Leatheran, her nose twitching with pleasurable excitement. “Armstrong, for instance, and that other man—I can’t remember his name—and then Crippen, of course. ”

In After the Funeral (1953):
“Murderers, as far as he could judge, seemed to be of all sorts and kinds. Some had had overweening vanity, some had had a lust for power, some, like Seddon, had been mean and avaricious, others, like Smith and Rowse, had had an incredible fascination for women; some, like Armstrong, had been pleasant fellows to meet. Edith Thompson had lived in a world of violent unreality,”

In Sleeping Murder (1976):
“Well—I was thinking about quiet Lizzie Borden—only the jury said she didn’t do it. And Wallace, a quiet man whom the jury insisted did kill his wife, though the sentence was quashed on appeal. And Armstrong who everybody said for years was such a kind unassuming fellow. I don’t believe murderers”

And, more prominently in By the Pricking of my thumbs (1968), where she even adventures a sort of psychological profile of the case:
“You remember in the case of Armstrong, anyone who had in any way offended him or insulted him, or indeed, if he even thought anyone had insulted him, that person was quickly asked to tea and given arsenic sandwiches. A sort of intensified touchiness. His first crimes were obviously mere crimes for personal advantage. Inheriting of money. The removal of a wife so that he could marry another woman.”

Suchet’s story:
It is well known that the anecdote referred by David Suchet about Peter Ustinov, if exaggerated, is real. It was not mrs Christie but her daughter, Rosalind Hicks, who, when she saw one of Ustinov's auditions, proclaimed he was not Poirot. And he replied: "He is now!"

Entertaining but lacks some details shared here

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True crime and Agatha Christie are two of my guilty pleasures. Weaving them into an overarching story that brings in context of the author and the times when she wrote — fantastic

Intricately woven story

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