While the Light Lasts

by Agatha Christie

Isla Blair (Narrator)

Five early stories unpublished since their first magazine appearances in the ’20s and ’30s, finally unearthed 21 years after Agatha Christie’s death, already showing the deft touch of the Queen of Crime in the making.

While the Light Lasts
The Actress
The House of Dreams
The Edge
Within a Wall

Like many of her contemporaries, Agatha Christie wrote stories for a variety of magazines in the 1920s and ’30s, and most of these eventually found their way into her books of short stories. Now, 21 years after her death, detective work worthy of Agatha Christie herself has unearthed `new’ stories, most of which have never been published anywhere in the world since their orginal appearances.

In this new collection the author observes the tragic flaws in human nature, providing a glimpse of the Queen of Crime in the making. Anyone who has ever read Agatha Christie will enjoy every story for her skill at characterisation and her ability to deliver an unexpected twist in the tail…

• ISBN13: 9780001054080
• Publish Date: 18 August 1997 (first published 4 August 1997)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 31 May 2013
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• Edition: Unabridged edition
• Format: Audiobook
• Duration: 2 hours and 35 minutes
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[brokentune]

This is another collection of short stories which were re-issued in this particular collection published in 1997, so not a compilation that Dame Agatha would have had a hand in compiling.

Nevertheless, there are some real gems amongst the stories. My personal favourites, the eponymous While the Light Lasts, The Edge and The Actress, are where AC shows some of the darker aspects of life, and she does it well.

The stories do not follow the usual formula of the who-dunnit and if that is what you are looking for you may as well pick one of her Marple or Poirot short stories. However, there are a couple that were later re-worked into Poirot adventures.

The stories contained in this volume are:

- The House of Dreams (first published in January 1926)

- The Actress (first published in May 1923 under the title of A Trap for the Unwary)

- The Edge (first published February 1927)

- Christmas Adventure (first published on 11 December 1923). This story was later expanded into novella form and was printed as The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (Poirot).

- The Lonely God (first published in July 1926)

- Within a Wall (first published in October 1925)

- The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest (first published in January 1932). The story was later expanded into The Mystery of the Spanish Chest.

- While the Light Lasts (first published in April 1924)

- Manx Gold (first published in May 1930)

3.5* really, but not quite 4*.