The Man in the Brown Suit & Crooked House

Emilia Fox’s tones carry us through Anne Beddingfeld’s exploits. The African sun beats down on her as she explores the multi-hued mosaic that is Cape Town, with its many secrets veiled in beguiling beauty. Anne’s dogged pursuit of the truth draws her towards the mysterious Colonel Race, a man whose aura seems as though it has been sewn together with threads of danger and charm. Alongside Colonel Race, the gallant Harry Lucas and the sly Mrs. Suzanne Blair forge alliances and rivalries, as they jostle with the shadows that cast a pall over a stolen diamond and an unsettling underbelly of political machinations.

In contrast, Hugh Fraser’s distinguished voice escorts us through the eerie, echoing halls of the Crooked House. Charles Hayward, with his heart ensnared by Sophia Leonides, tiptoes around the shattered fragments of a once close-knit family. The enigmatic Leonides family, with Brenda and Aristide at the helm, and an assortment of sundry characters like Laurence, Eustace, and Magda orbiting around them, leave no stone unturned in a web of greed, deception, and loathing. The murkiness of their intentions heightens the opacity of the clues, and the listener is pulled deeper into a vortex of suspicions.

What makes this audiobook an auditory feast is the harmonization of Agatha Christie’s impeccable storytelling with the modulated cadences of Emilia Fox and Hugh Fraser. They pull the listeners into the ebb and flow of a story that moves with the grace of a moonlit tide upon the shores of mystery. The deft interlacing of two disparate tales, each replete with an array of rich, finely sketched characters, serves as an effervescent potion that satiates the most discerning of mystery aficionados. And Then There Were None and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd will increase the delight for you if you are into it with heart and soul.