The Secret of Chimneys: The Official Authorized Edition (Agatha Christie Library) Paperback – July 7, 2020

If this were a play it might be called a farce. I thoroughly enjoyed it; it was very fast paced and humorous. Perhaps, as Graham Greene said, i tmight be called an "entertainment."

Story was wonderful but the print was jarring at times. Words split up, and continued with another word or two for one line. I should have been suspicious at the low price. The info inside said Made in the USA. Las Vegas,NV 08 May 2021. No wonder this is a terrible edition. Las Vegas and Nevada are on the bottom list for everything good.

A delightfully complex and witty satire of the standard detective whodunit, a tongue in cheek romp with a complex plot, clever, sometimes sardonic commentary, and often deliberately ridiculous (satire again) characters. Light reading but with Christie's skill with pen and plot. The Inspector Battle series continues in the same vein ... to our continued pleasure.

A very silly ludicrous romp through an upper class English manor house including mayhem, love and Ms Christy’s racism and anti semitism.If you can by pass that depending on your mood it can be fun.

Kept me reading to the end! Love the tongue in cheek humor and each character is splendid! Delightful Agatha Christie read!!

Finally, a group of individuals interested in reading Agatha Christie, after I decided to take the plunge in 2021. Agatha Christie adores following Shakespeare model with the mistaken identity or multiple aliases of a character. In this novel, Anthony Cade goes through three different monikers. I fervently wish that Christie had provided a list of characters in her novels as I felt compelled to list all the name changes. The Scotland Yard officer, Superintendent Battle, enters and exits too often and does not seem to detect what is happening. Anthony Cade agrees to deliver a manuscript to England for a friend and immediately encounters problems. Politics, intrigue, and romance follow as many people meet at Chimneys, the stately home Lord Caterham. The story provides amusement, but other novels, especially with Hercule Poirot, delight the reader.

In Agatha Christie's fifth mystery, down on his luck Anthony Cade travels from South Africa to London to deliver a manuscript memoir by a British diplomat to the fictional country of Herzoslovakia to a publisher in return for 1,000 pounds. Anthony also agrees to deliver a packet of letters to a woman whom he believes has been blackmailed. Once in London, it's clear that there are many people and organizations trying to prevent the delivery of the manuscript, and when one of them breaks into Anthony's hotel room, he steals the letters by mistake. Anthony is determined to get the letter back and deliver the manuscript, and he follows the clues to the country mansion Chimneys, where a man has been murdered. Once again, Christie has developed a plot that is so intricate and with so many twists and turns, that it's hard to summarize. I'll just say that Anthony stays one step ahead of the bad guys throughout the book, and he teams up with Superintendent Battle, from Scotland Yard, and a beautiful widow, presumably the author of the packet of letters, to solve the crime. Although not the main character in The secret of Chimneys, Superintendent Battle appears in four subsequent Christie mysteries. The fictional country of Herzeslovakia appears in two other Christie stories.

The cover of the book had some kind of greasy stuff on it. It smelled like chemicals. I had to wash the cover with a paper towel and dish soap three times before I could handle it. Was it a disinfectant?