Agatha Christie is one of the most widely read and successful authors in the history of literature. You know how an Agatha Christie mystery goes, right? A bunch of well-dressed people assemble at a country estate, or on a fancy boat, or a classy train, or what have you, someone gets murdered, detective Hercule Poirot shows up and cracks the case. Audible is bringing Christie's first-ever novel — The Mysterious Affair at Styles — back in a audiobook form, with Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister) playing the famous fictional detective.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles is about an injured World War I soldier named Captain Hastings who is invited to a large country estate (there it is) where he meets a gallery of colorful characters (ditto). When family matriarch Emily Inglethorp is brutally murdered, only one man is detective enough to solve it: Hercule Poirot. Hamish Patel will play Hastings while Succession star Harriet Walter is Emily Inglethorp. The cast also includes Jessica Gunning, Rob Delaney, Phil Dunster, Patsy Ferran, Vivian Oparah and Dinklage's Game of Thrones costarJohn Bradley (Samwell Tarly) as Lawrence Cavendish.
This new audio version of The Mysterious Affair at Styles will feature Dolby Atmos sound as well as an original score by Johnny Flynn. Agatha Christie's great-grandson James Prichard, who also runs the company Agatha Christie Limited, made quite a lot of how this audiobook breaks new ground. "This project promises to push the boundaries of what audio can be," he said in a statement, per CBR. "The combination of an extraordinary cast, music by Johnny Flynn and the use of ground-breaking audio technology will make this a completely extraordinary telling of my great-grandmother’s first story. We are very excited to partner with Audible on this journey and work with them to bring this story to life."
That sounds impressive, but I dunno: it's still a recording where actors read lines from a book. Audible called it an "immersive audio drama" in Variety, but I don't think there's anything wrong with just being a "good audiobook."
Whatever you want to call it, the new audiobook version of The Mysterious Affair at Styles comes out on Audible on November 14.
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