Showing results by narrator "Hugh Fraser" in All Categories

Mystery writer Anthony Eastwood is lured to the crime scene of a faked murder, where two individuals masquerading as police officers arrest him and charge him with murder. As the phony police officers escort Mr. Eastwood home, the true goal of the masquerade becomes apparent.

Movie star Mary Marvell consults with Hercule Poirot after receiving threatening letters that warn her to return her diamond, the famous "Western Star", to its rightful owner. But who does own the diamond, and is it even the genuine article?

Sane and sensible Edward Robinson secretly dreams of fast cars, adventurous women, and danger, but his fiancée, Maud, keeps him grounded in reality. When Edward wins money in a newspaper competition, he immediately buys the sleek red car of his dreams without telling Maud. Adventure swiftly ensues, as he is embroiled in high-society scandals that lead him to a significant transformation.

James has found himself at the fashionable resort Kimpton-on-Sea, all due to the persuasion of his girlfriend, Grace, who during the last few months of their courtship has become more difficult to deal with. Among the upper echelons of society, including the Rajah of Maraputna, James feels disgruntled and out of place. Eager to both irritate and win over Grace, James bypasses the queue to the changing rooms and ducks into the private huts on the beach so that he can be the first into the sea. It is only later that he realizes he has accidentally come into possession of a very valuable and sought-after object.

Mr. Davenheim, a wealthy financier, leaves his home to mail a letter, then fails to return. The story fills the newspapers and intrigues Hercule Poirot, who challenges Inspector Japp with the claim that he can solve the case before the police, and without leaving his flat.

Clarissa, the wife of a Foreign Office diplomat, is given to daydreaming. "Supposing I were to come down one morning and find a dead body in the library, what should I do?" she muses. Clarissa has her chance to find out when she discovers a body in the drawing-room of her house in Kent. Desperate to dispose of the body before her husband comes home with an important foreign politician, Clarissa persuades her three house guests to become accessories and accomplices.

When a stranger runs his car into a ditch in dense fog near the South Wales coast, and makes his way to an isolated house, he discovers a woman standing over the dead body of her wheelchair-bound husband, a gun in her hand. She readily admits to murder, and the unexpected guest offers to help her concoct a cover story.

The dentist was found with a blackened hole below his right temple. A pistol lay on the floor near his out-flung right hand. Later, one of his patients was found dead from a lethal dose of local anaesthetic. It's a clear case of murder and suicide. But why would a dentist commit a crime in the middle of a busy day of appointments? A shoe buckle holds the key to the mystery. Now, in the words of the rhyme, can Poirot pick up the sticks and lay them straight?

This electric short story begins in October on the island of Rhodes, a veritable paradise of privacy, beauty and calm, or so Hercule Poirot has imagined. The reality is quite startlingly different. The idyll is disturbed by the arrival of famed Chanel beauty Valentine Chantry, and a ripple of malice is felt across the island. Captivated by her wiles and immaculate good looks, one young married man falters, closely watched by Valentine’s brooding husband and the watchful eye of Poirot.

Brought to you by Penguin. In this collection of profiles, essays and travel stories, Chatwin takes us to Benin, where he is arrested as a mercenary during a coup; to Boston to meet an LSD guru who believes he is Christ; to India with Indira Ghandi when she attempted a political comeback in 1978; and to Nepal where he reminds us that 'Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot'.

A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time on audio. A retired Police Inspector recognizes a woman in his village whom he once suspected of murdering her husband. He is determined that her new husband won’t suffer the same fate....

A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an audiobook. After being fired from his uncle’s firm for his playboy antics, George Rowland decides to leave London on a whim. Waiting for his train to depart from Waterloo, a beautiful young girl dashes in and begs him to hide her. Wrapped up in the excitement, he agrees to follow a suspicious looking man and guard a packet for her. But he soon finds that she isn’t quite as innocent as she looks....

The rather disgruntled pair is sequestered in the Grand Adlington Hotel having made a pig’s ear out of their latest case. But, whilst sipping mournful cocktails, with Tommy oddly dressed as a Parson, they are gleefully accosted by their old acquaintance Mr. Bulger who has London’s most beautiful stage actress, Gilda Glen, in tow. Whilst Tommy and Tuppence mull over the note, in storms a man, an old flame of Gilda’s claiming he wants to ring someone’s neck.

A classic Agatha Christie short story available individually for the first time in audio. Plans for a secret bomber plane have been stolen from a minister’s house. Poirot is called to discreetly investigate the guests and to locate the plans before they fall into the enemy’s hands.

Love can propel us to our greatest heights…and darkest depths. In this new collection of Agatha Christie short stories, witness the dark side of love - crimes of passion, games of the heart and deadly affairs. This pulse-pounding compendium features beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, master of charades Parker Pyne, the enigmatic Harley Quin and the adventurous Tommy and Tuppence, all on the ready to solve a tantalizing mystery.

Agatha Christie was not only the biggest selling writer of detective stories the world has ever known, she was also a mystery in herself, giving only the rarest interviews, declining absolutely to become any sort of public figure and a mystery too in the manner in which she achieved her astonishing success. HRF Keating, a crime novelist and respected reviewer of crime fiction, brought together a dozen distinguished writers from both sides of the Atlantic to throw light on this double mystery.

A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time on audio. Recently swept off her feet, after a week of courting, the newly married Alix Martin is a woman obsessed by a reoccurring dream of her new husband’s murder. Each time she can see the murderer clearly and it is the mild mannered man she had almost married wreaking his revenge. But what is worse is that at the end of the dream she thanks the murderer.

An ageing barrister begins to regret past events when an old flame asks him to investigate the murder of her eccentric wealthy aunt in a mystery that recalls an old nursery rhyme....

It’s been many years since Mr Satterthwaite has seen Mr Harley Quin, so when Satterthwaite, awaiting his broken down car, goes to a tea shop called the Harlequin café, he begins to think of his friend. A self-described snob, Satterthwaite orders coffee and examines the coloured china when a bolt of sunlight comes in and the very same Mr Quin walks through the door.

When Mr Satterthswaite visits a new exhibit at the Harchester Galleries, there is one painting with a male figure that bares a more than unusual likeness to a mysterious acquaintance of his, a Mr Quin. And with one bold move he purchases the canvas on the spot and in another invites the artist of The Dead Harlequin to dine with him that night. The dinner gets off on the wrong foot with the artist emphatically disagreeing with most points and an empty place at the table ready for the mysterious Mr Quin to arrive.