The Secret of Chimneys

Anthony Cade, a charming drifter guiding tourists in Africa, accepts a simple courier job: deliver a dead diplomat's tell-all memoirs to a London publisher. Within days he's dodging armed strangers, improvising around a corpse, and tangled in the succession politics of Herzoslovakia, all of it converging on Chimneys, a great English country house where an international conference, a jewel thief of legend, and the imperturbable Superintendent Battle are about to collide.

This is early Christie in pure entertainment mode, more a comic thriller than a whodunit, with secret passages, coded letters, false identities stacked three deep, and a heroine as quick as the hero. Light on its feet and constantly surprising, it's ideal fun-listening, the literary equivalent of a caper film.

At roughly 79,500 words, The Secret of Chimneys runs about 9 hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

The edition linked here is available from Project Gutenberg under its US public-domain listing. Check the edition, translation, completeness and copyright rules where you live. LoudReader lets you browse and download Gutenberg books; they are not all stored on installation. To listen:

1. Install LoudReader on iPhone or iPad, or its iPad app on a compatible Apple Silicon Mac.
2. Search for “The Secret of Chimneys” in the built-in catalog and add it to your library.
3. Press play. A natural offline voice reads the book while each word highlights on screen, and your place is saved between sessions.

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