When I started listening to Agatha Christie’s After the Funeral, a Hercule Poirot story, I thought perhaps the BBC was experimenting with in medias res. Well, I was starting in the middle, but because the files had been mislabeled, not because of a clever dramatic technique. Once I realized that, things went a lot more smoothly.
As the title suggests, the opening of this book is after a funeral: Richard Abernethie appears to have died a normal death, but at the reading of the will, his sister Cora asks, “but he was murdered, wasn’t he?” Everyone shrugs it off, but when she turns up quite unmistakably murdered, Hercule Poirot is asked to investigate.
Listened to in the right order, this was not bad. I could see the shape of the solution before it was revealed, though the solution itself is a bit implausible. I think the portrayal was fair within the confines of the presentation, however, which has not always been the case with these adaptations.