2002 audio adaptation by Michael Bakewell of Christie's 1936 mystery,
in one 90-minute episode. The sinister Mr Shaitana invites four
detectives to a party with his "collection" of undetected murderers.
By the end of the evening, he's been stabbed…
Shaitana of course is largely plot machinery to get things
rolling, because this is a deliberate experiment by Christie: minimal
evidence, and plenty of means, motive and opportunity all round, so
the puzzle to be solved by the reader is the psychological one: which
of the four would have committed murder? Which of them would have
committed this murder?
This is another of John Moffatt's outings as Poirot, and if the part
drifts into cliché it's at least a workable one. Donald Sinden returns
from the 1997 production of Death on the Nile as Colonel Race,
Stephanie Cole returns as Ariadne Oliver from Hallowe'en Party and
The Pale Horse, and if Ioan Meredith is a bit lost as Superintendent
Battle among all these old hands he still makes a decent fist of it.
Helen Longworth is a little too much the dippy ingenue to make a
convincing Anne Meredith, but Mary Wimbush (who was also in The Pale
Horse, as Thyrza Grey) holds up her end splendidly as Mrs Lorrimer.
There are the usual small tweaks, but this is for the most part a
faithful rendition of an effective and slightly unusual story.
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.