How Do You Like Your Coffee? Black? with a Hint of Sugar, Or a Touch Of

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How do you like your coffee? Black? With a hint of sugar, or a touch of cream? If you’re expecting Agatha Christie’s serving of Black Coffee to be so simple, you’d be in for a surprise. Black Coffee can be summed up as intriguing, exciting, hilarious, typically British and perfectly proper. The Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, now in its 17th year of the Master Playwright Festival, selected the works of Agatha Christie for this year’s festival, which runs until February 26. And even if you’ve never read or seen any of Agatha Christie’s works, Black Coffee is positively the perfect place to start. Not only is it Christie’s first stage play, it also won’t leave you feeling as if you should have read the book first, or leave you guessing. Well, that’s not exactly true since this is a murder mystery. Black Coffee centers on the death of Sir Claud Amory, a wealthy, demanding scientist preoccupied with his inventions and obsessed with locked doors. When his potentially lucrative and deadly formula for a new explosive goes missing, Sir Amory decides to get to the bottom of the matter, not realizing that this will, in fact, lead to his death. Among the suspects are Sir Amory’s broke son Richard, his beautiful and mysterious Italian wife Lucia, Sir Amory’s ethnocentric spinster sister Caroline, their unbridled niece Barbara, the mysterious Italian guest and purported friend of Lucia, Dr. Carelli, and Sir Amory’s meek and mild secretary Edwina Raynor. On the heels of Sir Amory’s murder and with the theft of his formula, comes detective Monsieur Hercule Poirot and Captain Arthur Hastings – the Watson to Sherlock Holmes’ Poirot – to save the day and ultimately solve the mystery. What makes Black Coffee - or any of Agatha Christie’s works for that matter – exceptional, is perhaps its understated manner. What Christie’s works lack in showmanship that many a modern-day play may offer, she certainly makes up for in the methodical nature and on-point delivery of her plots. Buy your tickets: http://royalmtc.ca/Current-Plays/Black-Coffee.aspx .

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Miss Marple Mysteries 02 the Thirteen Problems
p q The Thirteen Problems To Leonard and Katherine Woolley 5 Contents About Agatha Christie The Agatha Christie Collection E-Book Extras 1 The Tuesday Night Club 9 2 The Idol House of Astarte 29 3 Ingots of Gold 53 4 The Bloodstained Pavement 73 5 Motive v Opportunity 89 6 The Thumb Mark of St Peter 109 7 The Blue Geranium 131 8 The Companion 157 9 The Four Suspects 185 10 A Christmas Tragedy 209 11 The Herb of Death 237 12 The Affair at the Bungalow 261 13 Death by Drowning 285 Copyright www.agathachristie.com About the Publisher 7 Chapter 11 The Herb of Death ‘Now then, Mrs B.,’ said Sir Henry Clithering encour- agingly. Mrs Bantry, his hostess, looked at him in cold reproof. ‘I’ve told you before that I will not be called Mrs B. It’s not digniﬁed.’ ‘Scheherazade, then.’ ‘And even less am I Sche – what’s her name! I never can tell a story properly, ask Arthur if you don’t believe me.’ ‘You’re quite good at the facts, Dolly,’ said Colonel Bantry, ‘but poor at the embroidery.’ ‘That’s just it,’ said Mrs Bantry. She ﬂapped the bulb catalogue she was holding on the table in front of her. ‘I’ve been listening to you all and I don’t know how you do it. “He said, she said, you wondered, they thought, everyone implied” – well, I just couldn’t and 237 p q there it is! And besides I don’t know anything to tell a story about.’ ‘We can’t believe that, Mrs Bantry,’ said Dr Lloyd.
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Bibliography
BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES BY AGATHA CHRISTIE Christie, Agatha. An Autobiography [1977] (London: Harper, 2011). ———. The Big Four (London: Collins, 1927). ———. The Body in the Library [1942] (New York, London, Toronto: Harper, 2011). ———. “The Capture of Cerberus” [1941], in Agatha Christie ’ s Secret Notebooks : Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making , ed. by John Curran (London: HarperCollins, 2009), 425-52. ———. “The Capture of Cerberus” [1947], in Herucle Poirot : The Complete Short Stories (London: HarperCollins, 1999), 831-51. ———. Cards on the Table [1936] (Glasgow: Fontana, 1969). ———. Cards on the Table : Marple Tie-In (London: HarperCollins, 2005). ———. A Caribbean Mystery (London: Book Club, 1964). ———. “The Case of the Discontented Soldier” [1934], in Parker Pyne Investigates (New York: William Morrow, 2012), 17-38. ———. “The Case of the Rich Woman” [1934], in Parker Pyne Investigates (New York: William Morrow, 2012), 87-104. ———. “The Cornish Mystery” [1923], in Poirot ’ s Early Cases (London: Harper, 2002), 57-80. ———. Crooked House [1949] (Glasgow: Fontana, 1990). ———. Curtain : Poirot ’ s Last Case [1975] (London: Harper, 2002). ———. Dead Man ’ s Folly [1956] (London: Collins, 1956). ———. Death on the Nile [1937] (New York, London, Toronto: Harper, 2011). © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 271 J.C. Bernthal, Queering Agatha Christie, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33533-9 272 BIBLIOGRAPHY ———. “The Double Clue” [1923], in Hercule Poirot : The Complete Short Stories (London: HarperCollins, 1999), 282-90. ———. Dumb Witness (London: Book Club, 1937). ———. Elephants Can Remember [1972] (London: HarperCollins, 2002). ———. Evil under the Sun [1941] (Glasgow, London: Fontana, 1988). ———. The Grand Tour (London: HarperCollins, 2012). ———. Hallowe ’ en Party [1969] (London: HarperCollins, 1994).
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