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Appointment With Death: B2
Appointment With Death: B2
Appointment With Death: B2
Audiobook (abridged)3 hours

Appointment With Death: B2

Written by Agatha Christie

Narrated by Roger May

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners.

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter with the language targeted at learners of English.

Mrs Boynton, a cruel and hated woman, is found dead in the ancient city of Petra. Was it just a weak heart and too much sun that killed her, or has one of Mrs Boynton’s many victims found revenge?

By chance, the great detective Hercule Poirot has some useful information, but is it enough to find the killer? He has 24 hours to solve the case.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 13, 2016
ISBN9780008210397
Appointment With Death: B2
Author

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.

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Reviews for Appointment With Death

Rating: 3.977272727272727 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Now I've read both the play and the novel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    One of her best. Don't judge it by the TV version which bears almost no relation to the original and contains a great deal of silliness that would've made Agatha very angry indeed. The book has a great deal to say about the nature of evil, and the need for courage in the face of it. Some great little riffs that could be called post modern too - reference to DL Sayers "Unnatural death" (1927) (p141 "...I read in a book - an English Detective story...") and Colonel Carbury's request that Poirot make a timetable and a list ("I suppose you couldn't do the things the detective does in books?" p116). Great fun. Just leave out white slaving nuns and the head of John the Baptist - AC was much cleverer than that!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    What a delightful way to spend a dreary, rainy day then hunkered with Agatha Christie. Appointment by Death presents an interesting tale of a domineering mother and her four children. Mrs. Boynton controls her four children and does not allow any breach from her orders. The Boynton family travels to Jerusalem and Petra, and while in Petra, Mrs. Boynton is discovered dead. Enter our favorite and conceited detective, Hercule Poirot, who determines that Mrs. Boynton has been murdered. Using his little grey cells, Poirot, details why or why not each of the children may have committed the murder. Christie beautifully captures the essence of the Middle East and displays the domination of Mrs. Boynton. Yes, this type of controlling woman does exist, and what a shame for those under her hands. I love Christie’s use of examples to show how subservient an individual may act. The example of a line drawn on the floor and a man places a rooster’s beak on the line, the rooster will not move because he thinks he is tied down. This example shows Mrs. Boynton’s control.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A psychological thriller as much as a mystery. The deeply controlling Mrs Boynton is one of the most unpleasant and chilling characters I can remember. Set amongst a group of holiday-makers travelling in the Middle East, this has an interesting mixture of people, and some clever plotting.Hercule Poirot asks questions after the crime is committed, about half-way through the book, and ties together his evidence in a way that I don't think I would ever have guessed. I had, of course, spotted several instances in the trail of false clues, and also some of the lies told in the evidence. Recommended if you like this genre of mid-20th century light crime fiction.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A tormented family goes on holiday to the Middle East...... Monster Dearest was previously a Prison Wardess and now has her family (children/step-children) as her prisoners.....

    An English (Psych) female doctor & a well known French psychotherapist come across the family and attempt to intervene....... add to the mix a good friend of the family, a well known member of Parliament (who is anti-oppression), and a mousey spinister....

    M. Poirot is in town and is asked to find the "truth", even though there will not be enough hard proof to bring a murderer to trial.

    I really liked this book. I liked most of the characters and the psych. study. Almost everyone had opportunity as well as a motive and the family & both doctors all thought to protect each other....

    Very interseting
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One of my favorite Christies. An absolutely obnoxious victim, an old spider of a woman; an oddball family group to pull suspects from; the red city of Petra as a setting--who could ask for anything more in a relaxing mystery?
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Number 19 in the Hercule Poirot series and first published in 1938. The tyrannical Mrs Boynton has a great hold over her family which many witness during a holiday to The Holy Land. When the sadistic woman and former prison warden is seemingly murdered, Belgian detective Poirot interrupts his vacation to take on the case. The book examines the psychology of the warped Boynton family. Her other characters include Lady Westholme (imperious MP), Dr.Gerard (French doctor), Miss Pierce (scatterbrained goose), Miss Sarah King (newly qualified doctor). A good read with a twist at the end.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Really 3.5 stars. I had trouble getting into the book at first because I found the character of Mrs. Boynton do creepy and unpleasant, but quite enjoyed it after that. Good ending.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    One of her best, I find, mostly due to how rich the characterization is and how good of a villain Mrs Boynton is. I also really enjoyed the epilogue and I think if any book deserved an epilogue so the reader knows the characters end up okay, it was this. The only thing that bothers me is that Poirot dismisses the idea of letting the culprit get away with it even though he did it in Orient Express and in my opinion they're both as evil. Orient Express is my favourite Christie so far and it's also due to the fact that the murder questions Poirot's values so much - he had no good reason to pursue the investigation here seeing as Mrs Boynton is an absolute sadist and I for one would have liked more consistency on his part. Regardless, it's a really good mystery.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    One of the more predictable of the Poirot cases. I had figured out the solution by the halfway point so the second half of the book was a little tedious to read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Poirot overhears a line of conversation out of his hotel windown in Jerusulam: "You do see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?". He doesn't know who is speaking, or who they are with, but he has a feeling that he will recognise the voice if he hears it again.The story centres around an American family, the Boyntons, who are holidaying in the Near East. Also in the same hotel in Jerusalem is the inquisitive British medical student Miss King, and the renowned psychologist Dr Gerrard. These two become acquainted over their interest in discussing the psychological abnormalities of the Boynton family. Head of the family is the wickedly memorable Mrs Boynton whose sadistic control of her family gives no small motive in their wanting her dead. We are left in suspense as to if they will manage to kill her, when it will happen, where, and who will steel themselves to do it. Each member of the family is different psychologically speaking, with a couple of them being of particular interest. It is not at all obvious even to the dénouement who does the crime, which keeps up a decent level of suspense throughout. The psychological themes are integral to the plot and suspense, and very well done. Overall this is a very readable novel with some keen observations of human behaviour and a good rendering of the local atmosphere.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I've been wanting to try reading mysteries for a while, and I figured what better way to start than with the 'Queen of Crime' herself, Agatha Christie. I picked this one up on an impulse in the bookstore, mostly because I liked the setting and thought the plot sounded interesting.In this book, Christie's beloved detective Hercule Poirot is on vacation in Jerusalem, and during his first night's day he overhears part of a conversation in which someone says, "You do see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?" Not long after that, Poirot is asked to look into the murder of Mrs. Boynton, the controlling matriarch of her family, who by all accounts is better off dead. Poirot perserveres in his investigation regardless, and in time virtually everyone comes under suspicion for the murder of Mrs. Boynton.You can find my full review at Rantings of a Bookworm Couch Potato.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is one of several of Christie's mysteries that show some of the influence of her archeologist husband.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Shocking ending! Reminiscent of Murder on the Orient Express, but of course enough differences to keep you interested!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Short, but still interesting.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Another of Christie's adventures that keeps you guessing until the very end. A subtle clue is there that makes you think...it could be this one...but, it's so much more obviously THIS one. And, then, of course, it's the one who flitted right through your brain with no more than a second's thought. I love that she constantly delights me no matter how jaded I think I am to murder mysteries and no matter that I read these as a teen. Thirty years later they are just as engrossing, just as intriguing---if not more so---and just as satisfying.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Death of a very unpleasant woman while sitting in a deck chair during a tour of an archaeological site in he Near Eat, Infuenced by Christie's life in the area with her archaeologist husband Max Mallown. There is a good film version. .
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Amidst a group that is touring the Middle East is a family, consisting of a malicious, domineering woman, her three adult step-children, her daughter, and her daughter-in-law. The evil old harridan controls every aspect of her children's lives, rarely even allowing them to interact independently with the outside world.When she is found dead, it is assumed that the trip was too strenuous for her, since she suffered from a "dicky" heart.The investigating officer feels that there are still questions about the woman's death, and turns to Hercule Poirot, who happens to be in the Middle East, and who also happens to have overheard a very incriminating conversation between two of her children.The character of the vile old woman was so vivid that I could feel the evil oozing from her! In fact, in my mind's eye I saw her as a nasty, fat, black spider, spinning the web in which she entrapped her children. This is an example of Christie at her best! I enjoyed it immensely.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I thought it might have been Nadine who was the murderer, she had the motive and the knowledge. Then the Dr.Gerald was a close second with what I thought maybe faking a disease of malaria. But Hercule Poirot delivered the verdict with Lady Westhlome and afterward it made much sense. It was a good quick read. Like it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I like Miss Marple more than Poirot, but the full cast audio recordings are quick and great regardless.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Die, Mother, Die!If anyone ever deserved to die, Mrs. Boynton was it.This is made chillingly clear to us in the very first sentence of Agatha's 1938 novel Appointment With Death: "You do see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?"The speaker is Mrs. Boynton's stepson, Raymond, and he's making that desperate, emphatic statement to his sister Carol while they stand at the window of the King Solomon Hotel in Jerusalem. Unbeknownst to him, there is one other person who heard that declaration of murderous intent: Monsieur Hercule Poirot, who has a room above the Boynton's.You do see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?"The question floated out into the still night air, seemed to hang there a moment and then drift away down into the darkness towards the Dead Sea.Hercule Poirot paused a minute with his hand on the window catch.…."Decidedly, wherever I go, there is something to remind me of crime!" he murmured to himself.Poirot thinks he's overheard someone rehearsing a play or reading aloud from a book and so he goes to bed, trying to put the remark out of his head.After that opening scene, Poirot won't show up for another 75 pages. By that time, She has most certainly been killed.And what of this Mrs. Boynton? Why must she be killed?As we get deeper into Appointment With Death, it quickly becomes apparent that the lady must die in order to put the rest of her family out of their misery. Fat, lazy and self-indulgent, Mrs. Boynton is surrounded by the fawning members of her family—stepchildren Raymond, Carol, and Lennox; her daughter Ginevra; and Lennox' wife Nadine. Revolving like satellites around the family are other characters: famed French psychoanalyst Dr. Theodore Gerard, young doctor Sarah King, family friend Mr. Cope, social matron Lady Westholme, and her traveling companion Miss Pierce.But it's the ruling Queen Mother to whom our eye is constantly drawn. Indulge me, if you will, a couple of passages from the novel describing this vicious sack of flesh we call "Mrs. Boynton.""Heavens!" thought Dr. Gerard, with a Frenchman's candid repulsion. "What a horror of a woman!" Old, swollen, bloated, sitting there immovable in the midst of them—a distorted old Buddha—a gross spider in the center of a web!A few minutes later, as Dr. Gerard continues to observe the odd family tableau with its demanding matriarch giving orders and responding to her minions with mere grunts, he makes this observation:"What an absurdity of an old tyrant!"And then, suddenly, the old woman's eyes were full on him, and he drew in his breath sharply. Small, black, smoldering eyes they were, but something came from them—a power, a definite force, a wave of evil malignancy. Dr. Gerard knew something about the power of personality. He realized that here was no spoilt tyrannical invalid indulging petty whims. This old woman was a definite force. In the malignancy of her glare he felt a resemblance to the effect produced by a cobra. Mrs. Boynton might be old, infirm, a prey to disease, but she was not powerless. She was a woman who knew the meaning of power, who had exercised a lifetime of power and who had never once doubted her own force.Mrs. Boynton reminds me of someone from a horror movie where a mother sadistically dominates her children and isolates them from the rest of the world --Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th or that epitome of matriarchal terror Mommie Dearest. The Boynton family is rich, thanks to the dear departed father Elmer who was a shrewd and well-liked businessman, but you'd never know it by the way Mrs. Boynton tightly knots the purse strings. This trip to the Holy Land seems to be an unusual instance of the adult children being allowed out of the house. Here's how Mr. Cope describes the domestic history to Dr. Gerard:"Mrs. Boynton shielded these children from the outside world and never let them make any outside contacts. The result of that is that they've grown up—well, kind of nervy. They're jumpy, if you know what I mean. Can't make friends with strangers…She's encouraged them to live at home and not go out and look for jobs….They've none of them got any hobbies. They don't play golf. They don't belong to any country club. They don't go around to dances or do anything with the other young people. They live in a great barrack of a house way down in the country, miles from anywhere. I tell you, Dr. Gerard, it seems all wrong to me."Later, Dr. Gerard will deliver this armchair analysis about why the family members cannot break the old woman's grip:"Have you ever seen the old experiment with a cock? You chalk a line on the floor and put the cock's beak to it. The cock believes he is tied there. He cannot raise his head. So with these unfortunates. She has worked on them, remember, since they were children. She has hypnotized them to believe that they cannot disobey her….She has made them believe that utter dependence on her is inevitable. They have been in prison so long that if the prison door stood open they would no longer notice!....They would all be afraid of freedom."In that first opening scene when Carol asks Raymond if he thinks killing their stepmother would be morally wrong, he replies, "No. I think it's just like killing a mad dog—something that's doing harm in the world and must be stopped. This is the only way of stopping it."Eventually, Mrs. Boynton is stopped—when her black heart suddenly ceases to beat as she's sitting on a perch overlooking a campsite at Petra while on a tour to the holy site. All throughout the camp, there is a feeling of relief that the old lady's grip has finally been loosened. At first, it seems that Mrs. Boynton died of natural causes, but then little suspicions start to build as more details come to light—a hypodermic needle is missing, along with a bottle of the deadly drug digitoxin; and then someone notices a tiny puncture mark on the stepmother's wrist.Despite this long build-up about the vividly evil character of Mrs. Boynton, none of it really matters to Poirot during his investigation into her murder. "The moral character of the victim has nothing to do with it! A human being who has exercised the right of private judgment and taken the life of another human being is not safe to exist amongst the community." Mrs. Boynton may have been Hitler's twin sister, but that wouldn't matter one speck to Poirot in his hermetically sanitized world view. There has been a crime and the criminal, no matter how justified, must be held accountable.The Belgian detective promises to catch the murderer in twenty-four hours or less and he spends the rest of the day interviewing those in the tour group about the events leading up to Her sudden death. Unlike the average Christie mystery, Appointment With Death depends more on psychological profiling than it does physical evidence. As he talks to the family members and others who were there at the Petra camp, Poirot carefully studies their reactions, their verbal tap dances around the truth, their interior psychological makeup. While he doesn't completely dispense with the physical evidence—note the detailed timelines he is always compiling—Poirot is more keenly interested in why Mrs. Boynton was killed than how.While I applaud Agatha for stretching into new territory, Appointment With Death doesn't possess the usual sprightly zing of her other novels. For my taste, there are far too many pages devoted to psychobabble—especially when you get Dr. Gerard and Sarah King together in the same room—which hang like a millstone around the novel's neck, dragging it down to the watery depths. It's as if Agatha got her hands on some dusty volumes of Freud and/or Jung, and just couldn't wait to share everything she'd learned. While psychology is central to the book—as, indeed, it is to most mystery novels—Agatha just doesn't integrate it seamlessly into the scenes here in the Holy Land.To continue in my nitpicking rant, I had trouble envisioning the murder scene (the camp the tourists arrive at midway through the plot). As frequent readers of Christie novels can attest, the geography of the murders is important to visualize (at least if you want to keep up with Poirot or Miss Marple). In some cases, an actual floor plan is included in the pages of the book. Sadly, that is not the case here, and we're left trying to visualize the rows of pitched tents, the trail up the mountainside, and the perch at the mouth of the cave where Mrs. Boynton met her end.In the end, Appointment With Death plods along to its typical Christie denouement and the revelation of a killer, which actually turns out to be rather lackluster. The one thing you'll carry away from the novel, however, is that fascinatingly cruel woman who commandeers events from the center of her selfish universe. Yes, Mrs. Boynton must die, but when she exits the book some of the spark goes along with her.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One of my favorite Christies. An absolutely obnoxious victim, an old spider of a woman; an oddball family group to pull suspects from; the red city of Petra as a setting--who could ask for anything more in a relaxing mystery?
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    On Dec 29, 1945, I siad: "Today I finished a mystery - then the mail came: three Chicago Suns, the Commonweal, abd The Messenager, which had all about the four new Ameican Cardinals" Not a word about what I thought of this book!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    June, 2001Appointment with DeathAgatha ChristieAnother one from Grandpa’s paperback collection. Typical Christie fare. Poirot mystery. I usually prefer the “singles”, as I call them, rather than the Miss Marples or Poirots, but this was okay. Poirot is in Jerusalem, some tour thing, and some nasty old biddy gets murdered in her tent, or sitting outside of it, rather. Everybody had a reason to kill her, especially her grown children, who she kept under a firm grip financially and emotionally. Christie does excel at that kind of familial desperation - the need to kill to escape. I often wish they’d get away with it!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is one of my favourite Christie novels. I love the idea of setting the murder at Petra of all places and the victim, Mrs Boynton is one of Christie's most psychologically interesting characters and one who very definitely deserves to die.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Appointment with Death hails from Christie's prime, i.e. the 1930s, and its exotic settings in the middle East are a big plus, too. Poirot is called to the scene -- Petra -- to investigate the suspicious death of a tyrannical matriarch, whose cowering stepchildren and natural daughter are all sympathetic but highly plausible suspects. Christie also brings in a couple of characters with medical/psychological background here, and they spend a great deal of the novel dissecting the likelihood that our suspects' deep-seated murderous urges simply grew too powerful to resist. This doesn't make for an action-packed story, but I never found it dull.Overall, then, this is a good standard Christie. It's not one of her very best, but it's still a delight to read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I read this after watching the BBC production with the same title. It was interesting to see how it had been adapted. This is classic A.C. with a great sense of atmosphere as well, as it is set near the ancient city of Petra and then partly in Jerusalem.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    You could look at Appointment with Death as either an appropriate read, or a totally wrong read for Mother’s Day as it deals with a monstrous mother whose chief joy in life is tormenting her children. In this offering by Agatha Christie we deal with the death of Mrs. Boynton, who along with her family is vacationing in the Middle East. Coincidentally, Hercule Poirot is also on vacation and is conveniently on hand to investigate firstly whether a murder did occur, and if so, who is the murderer.In typical Christie fashion, there’s plenty of suspects, the five remaining Boyntons, all interesting characters on their own, as well as other travellers in the party. A few red herrings help to keep you guessing, but overall, I wasn’t too surprised at the outcome. Perhaps not my favorite Agatha Christie mystery, but certainly an enjoyable read that gives us a fun look at upper class travellers in the 1930’s.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Another reliable author for a bit of Christmas reading. The interesting thing about this one, is how different it is to the TV adaptation.