Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, I'll be presenting another Clubland Q&A taking questions from Steyn Club members live around the planet - and back at our regular hour: 3pm North American Eastern - that's 8pm British Summer Time/9pm Central European.
Meanwhile, at the close of this St George's Day, welcome to Part Five of a rather English adventure: an Agatha Christie caper set amidst Bolshevist plots on the streets of London - The Secret Adversary. Listeners seem to be enjoying it, but Nicola Timmerman, an Ontario Steyn Clubber, chides:
You are as bad as Tommy teasing Tuppence by withholding the replies to her newspaper ad! I was just getting into Part Three when it ended. Sigh - back to the continuous anti-Semitic demonstrations and attacks at 'the institutions of higher learnings'...
Steve from Manhattan, a First Month Founding Member of the Steyn Club, agrees:
Comrades, please step away from your Earth Day celebrations to help your fellow Club members with a crisis... Our heretofore beloved host, Mr. Steyn, has been reading to us—his devoted Club members - a chapter a day of an Agatha Christie novel, The Secret Adversary. So, what's the crisis that should distract from Earth Day/Lenin's Birthday, you ask?
Agatha Christie, and Mark, are proceeding with anything but Thunbergian 'maximum speed' in delivering the twists and turns of the plot. Every night, Club members are tuning in to hear Mark, and every night we are left on the edge of some cliff—last night in the National Gallery in London. Perhaps Mark could alleviate some of the stress by reading an extra page or two of the next following chapter—so that we are not left hanging for what seems like eternity?
Well, as I always say, Steve and Nicola, there are two ways to enjoy our Tales for Our Time - either as a slug of nightly audio Ovaltine twenty minutes before you lower your lamp. Which means cliffhangers-a-go-go. Or you can save them up for a binge-listen on a long weekend car journey - in which case you're hanging on a cliff only for the few seconds it takes to click the next episode. Better a binger than a whinger, as the old Australian proverb has it.
In tonight's episode of The Secret Adversary, having been apprised of the great stakes of their mission - preventing a looming coup in Britain - Tommy and Tuppence proceed to the Ritz to meet a citizen of the United States:
Mr Julius P Hersheimmer was a great deal younger than either Tommy or Tuppence had pictured him. The girl put him down as thirty-five. He was of middle height, and squarely built to match his jaw. His face was pugnacious but pleasant. No one could have mistaken him for anything but an American...
As is traditional with Americans in Agatha Christie, Mr Hersheimmer is tremendously energetic and says "darned", "I guess" and "sure thing" a lot.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Five of our adventure simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes of The Secret Adversary can be found here, and previous Tales for Our Time here.
If you'd like to join us in The Mark Steyn Club, we'd love to have you: please see here. And, if you've a chum who enjoys classic fiction, we've introduced a special Steyn Gift Membership: you'll find more details here. Oh, and we also have coming up this weekend something a little special on the musical front.
Please join me tomorrow evening for Part Six of The Secret Adversary.
