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Murder Isn't Easy

The Forensics of Agatha Christie

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Murder Isn't Easy

By: Carla Valentine
Narrated by: Imogen Church
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About this listen

Short-listed, Crimefest H R F Keating Award, 2022

Agatha Christie is one of our most beloved authors—a storyteller unparalleled in her clever plots and twisting tales. But Agatha was also a forensic expert; in each of her books she employs an expert weaving of human observation, ingenuity and genuine science of the era.

In Murder Isn't Easy Carla Valentine illuminates all of Agatha's incredible knowledge, showing how she stayed at the cutting edge of forensics from ballistics to fingerprint analysis, as seen through much-loved characters such as Poirot and Miss Marple.

From the glamour and grit of Agatha Christie's stories, to the real-life cases that inspired them, Murder Isn't Easy will immerse you in the forensics that influenced generations of writers and scientists alike.

©2021 Carla Valentine (P)2021 Hachette Audio UK Criminal & Forensic Psychology Literary History & Criticism Psychology Psychology & Mental Health True Crime Crime Forensics Murder

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Critic reviews

"Fascinating." (Prima)

"Engaging and informative." (Guardian)
All stars
Most relevant
This is an excellent title—the book is well constructed, weaving Christie’s books, her biography, details of the history and theory of forensic science, and real-life cases together extremely artfully.

The performance was a little grating to start with—quite slowly spoken and over-egged at times. I got used to it eventually and I would recommend playing at 1.2x speed to help. But it was enthusiastic and energetic at least.

Brilliant book—performance takes some getting used to

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Lots of interesting facts for the Agatha Christie fan. Narrator over emphasises and tries to infuse emotion into every sentence. Did not work for me

Story is good. Narrator over acts

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The author glosses over a lot of the more problematic elements of Christie such as her slightly petty and vindictive nature (and hence her disappearance) as well as her abundant racism.

And though it can be argued that this was not the focus of the text, I think the overt glorification of Christie is something we as a society are too prone to with parasocial relationships being discussed every day on social media.

I think a dash more critique would have been due on the text to make us see her as human and less as a paragon of authorial scientific knowledge.

A little too glorifying of Christie

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Interesting subject matter, although perhaps some elements are drawn out longer than they need to be. As others have said the narrator makes this virtually unlistenable. She tries to put inflection into everything, even things like pronouns, and it just ends up sounding weird. Imagine those conversations you have with a slightly drunk friend when you are completely sober and you will get the idea……..

Good book, indifferent audiobook

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I loved Past Mortems by this author so was excited to listen to this one. It's very obvious from the start that Carla Valentine is a huge Agatha Christie fan, and her passion shines through this book. In fact she made me realise I need to re-read Christie's books. I loved how Carla described how Agatha Christie kept up to date with the forensic methods available at the time, giving examp es from Christie's books (without spoilers) and how forensic science developed over the years..

The book is enthusiastically narrated by Imogen Church whi is perfect for this book.

Interesting and informative

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