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Black Coffee

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Black Coffee

By: Agatha Christie, Charles Osborne
Narrated by: John Moffatt
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About this listen

Adapted from the play by Charles Osborne.

Sir Claud Amory has discovered the formula for a new powerful explosive, which is stolen by one of the large household of relatives and friends.

Locking everyone in the library, Sir Claud switches off the lights to allow the thief to replace the formula on the table, no questions asked.

When the lights come on, however, he is dead, and Hercule Poirot – with assistance from Hastings and Inspector Japp – has to unravel a tangle of family feuds, old flames and suspicious foreigners to find the killer and prevent a global catastrophe.

©1998 Agatha Christie Limited, a Chorion Company. All rights reserved. Adapted as a novel by Charles Osborne. Charles Osborne asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work (P)1998 HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, London, UK Mystery Traditional Detectives Fiction Detective

Critic Reviews

"Christie biographer Osborne's adaptation of the grande dame's 1930 play has been blessed by the Christie estate and heartily endorsed by her grandson Michael Prichard. It's a classic 'someone in this room is the murderer' tale set in 1934." (Publishers Weekly)
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Why didn't Agatha Christie's evil money-hungry grandson hire a writer like Charles Osborne to write new Christie books, instead of selling his grandmother's soul to the devil (like he is doing left, right, front and center)?

Wonderful Christie writer - S. Hannah be blowed!

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Classic Agatha Christie. This is what I want to hear if I'm listening to an Agatha Christie story I ,something containing all the traditional ,if predictable tropes related to that author. I think the adapted plays fit this style the best. If only it wasn't so short

classic Agatha

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Of the Agatha Christie stories I've read/listened to, this is probably the most camp (I mean this in a good way).

Some humour clearly works better on-stage than as part of a novel. Conversely, some plot elements are easier to convey to a modern audience in the form of a novel. e.g. during the one-minute blackout, the characters hear various noises, including the "tearing of silk". I doubt many people would know what that sounds like, a difficulty for modern stage productions.

mild spoilers follow

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(last chance)
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The mystery isn't too satisfying, partly because the murderer's actions, while surreptitious, aren't hidden from the reader. Presumably Christie's screenplay is similarly explicit in its stage directions, but Osborne's decision to adapt it this way is a curious one.

On the positive side, this does mean that the means and opportunity aren't overly elaborate compared to, say, "Death on the Nile" (a story I love, but which stretches credulity). "Black Coffee" has a contrived setup (hence my camp comment), but the solution is elegant.

Not Christie's best, but well worth the listen

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just incredibly boring, could barely get through it. very obvious that it was from a play

Boring

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I cannot say how infuriating it is to purchase one version of a book only to have audible substitute a different version for it on my cloud library.

Not the version of black coffee I originally purchased

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