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Cover of The Secret Adversary

The Secret Adversary

Agatha Christie

First published 1922 · Mystery, Espionage & Thrillers · 8 hr 51 min of audio · 30 chapters

Two friends out of work and out of money advertise themselves as adventurers for hire, and are immediately handed something far more dangerous than they bargained for.

Things worth knowing

  • The Times weekly edition serialised it complete and unabridged in seventeen instalments from 12 August to 2 December 1921, and Christie was paid £50 for the serialisation rights.
  • Christie took the name Jane Finn from a conversation overheard in a cafe about a woman called Jane Fish; the book was titled The Joyful Venture, then The Young Adventurers, before it became The Secret Adversary.

Checked against source, source.

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Every chapter has the recording and the same chapter as text. Open both if you like: the text is the words you are hearing.

  1. 1 Prologue 3 min
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  2. 2 Chapter One 18 min
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  3. 3 Chapter Two 17 min
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  4. 4 Chapter Three 12 min
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  5. 5 Chapter Four 20 min
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  6. 6 Chapter Five 12 min
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  7. 7 Chapter Six 14 min
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  8. 8 Chapter Seven 13 min
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  9. 9 Chapter Eight 21 min
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  10. 10 Chapter Nine 20 min
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  11. 11 Chapter Ten 15 min
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  12. 12 Chapter Eleven 21 min
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  13. 13 Chapter Twelve, Part One 17 min
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  14. 14 Chapter Twelve, Part Two 18 min
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  15. 15 Chapter Thirteen 21 min
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  16. 16 Chapter Fourteen 14 min
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  17. 17 Chapter Fifteen 15 min
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  18. 18 Chapter Sixteen 18 min
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  19. 19 Chapter Seventeen 32 min
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  20. 20 Chapter Eighteen 29 min
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  21. 21 Chapter Nineteen 21 min
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  22. 22 Chapter Twenty 13 min
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  23. 23 Chapter Twenty-One 12 min
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  24. 24 Chapter Twenty-Two 11 min
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  25. 25 Chapter Twenty-Three 14 min
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  26. 26 Chapter Twenty-Four 23 min
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  27. 27 Chapter Twenty-Five 31 min
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  28. 28 Chapter Twenty-Six 12 min
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  29. 29 Chapter Twenty-Seven 22 min
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  30. 30 Chapter Twenty-Eight 7 min
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Where this comes from

First published in 1922, which places the book in the public domain in the United States. Agatha Christie died in 1976, so in countries that protect a work for seventy years after the author's death it stays in copyright and becomes free there on 1 January 2047. Open Ear Books offers this recording only where it is free to offer.

Cover image: generated for this edition.

Narration: text-to-speech.

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