The Pale Horse

By: Agatha Christie

Narrated by: Hugh Fraser

Soon to be a Prime original limited series!

In the classic mystery by Queen of Mystery Agatha Christie, an elderly priest is murdered, quite possibly doomed by a woman’s deathbed confession and by the secrets kept safely locked behind closed doors of a mysterious local pub. When an elderly priest is murdered, the killer searches the victim so roughly that his already ragged cassock is torn in the process.

What was the killer looking for? And what had a dying woman confided to the priest on her deathbed only hours earlier?

Mark Easterbrook and his sidekick Ginger Corrigan are determined to find out. Maybe the three women who run The Pale Horse public house, and who are rumored to practice the “Dark Arts,” can provide some answers?

©1961 Agatha Christie Limited (P)2004 HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Crazy!

The ending shocked me. For anyone who is wondering, it isn’t actually witchcraft that is killing people off. I hope that isn’t too much of a spoiler, but if you are familiar with any of Christie’s other books you could probably surmise that on your own. Brilliant. I loved it.

Faithful Rendition of a Classic Christie

Very well narrated version of a classic Christie mystery with the typical misdirection and subtle clues. An enjoyable detective story.

Greatness

Agatha Christie was a veritable Genius. Completely in a class of her own! This story has so many smooth twists and turns and keeps you guessing right up to the very end when she ties the whole thing together with a satin ribbon. I read/listen to a lot of different Mysteries by many Authors. Although I enjoy them and they're very good
they don't come close to her. Each of her Books are completely different and How Many she has written is amazing. She was Amazing! Loved it.

Intriguing

As an Agatha Christie fan, I must say I was not disappointed. Loved the plot twists, and human insights. As always, Hugh Fraser did an outstanding job.

A bit slow, but great surprise ending!

The overall story seemed to drag a bit more than most of Agatha Christie's work. However, the ending was still a surprise. The performance was excellent, as usual.

thrilling

it was quite thrilling. I do think I'm right on who done it, and it turns out all wrong. great work!

Where's Mrs Oliver

I got this book because it was listed as part of Mrs Oliver series
She's hardly in it at all.Wish Christie would have used put her in more books. She's such a delightful person. However this one is great. Of course Hugh Frasier does his usual wonderful job with great characters and story

Pales in comparison to other Christie stories

Caveat: All of Christie’s work is good & imbued with the elusive “X factor” (if you will) of storytelling few authors—even very competent, intelligent, entertaining, and prolific authors—will never count as one of their assets. Thus, as I have stated in some of my previous reviews of her work, it feels almost wrong to nitpick since no author with a large body of work will have an output of perfection, but Pale Horse is not my favorite Christie story.

I didn’t find the characters very engaging, or the story line compelling (although I absolutely did not guess the “villain,” at all, but then again I’m infamously bad at that ha ha).

However, the story is well- constructed and there is nothing “wrong” with it. It is well-performed and the mystery is a typical convoluted, implausible but for some reason you just don’t care Christie plot, peppered with the typical cheap shots against her own gender, which I can never decide if she herself believed, or if she was mocking society’s attitude’s toward women (one hopes the latter, but I’m not so sure). I’m sure they registered with absolutely no one back when these were first published.

However, I can see how the elements of this story that made it less compelling reading translates well to the new film/ series that has been made based upon it.

Creative

This story has a unique take on a scheme. I always enjoy Hugh Frasers narrative.

One of my favorite Agatha Christie books

This was great, a bit different than her other books in several ways. Nice to have a change from her usual detectives.