Endless Night

So things are always dark and everything that we get for Scorpios.

And my one is Endless Night.

Again, not one I've heard of.

Is this one you've heard of?

I think that's fun.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

So what it says to me is, like any good Scorpio, Endless Nights is once experienced and never forgotten.

Apparently that's a Scorpio.

I'm interviewing Kate Atkinson about her latest book, Our Noble Cells.

I'm also going to review for you Endless Night by Agatha Christie, Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman and Whistler by Ann Patchett.

So let's get stuck in.

No, before we do that, I've just got to tell you something.

which is fascinating to talk to.

But before we talk to Kate, let's do some book reviews.

So the first book is Endless Night by Agatha Christie.

I did this because one of my book clubs was reading the book.

Things are about to get very dark, folks, in our final two narrators here.

So we are going to pit poor Captain Hastings against Mike Rogers from Endless Night.

And Victoria, why don't you start us off here?

I think Endless Night's one of the, not one of her best, one of the best psychological thrillers that's ever been written.

His total self-belief and all complete control and knowledge in the situation.

yet lack of self-awareness is incredible.

But she does cover the 20th century in a way that I always think is perhaps a bit undersold.

Her post-war books... quite an interesting sort of little slanting look at the way society changed after the cucumber sandwiches era, you know, and then if you really put like Endless Night, which is written in, which was published in the 60s, I mean, wow, you know, that's a pretty good portrait of a modern, a young man.

She's good at the male voice.

You know, he's a very, very modern figure, I think.

The way character and plot move as one is quite brilliant, I think.

It's a very powerful plot, and it does have this autobiographical element.

And then rather than going for one of the obvious, Murder on the Orient Express or Roger Ackroyd or any of those, I would say Endless Night.

Go for Endless Night.

And rather than recasting her, that would have been a travesty, they had her wear this hat to kind of cover up her hair.

She was going to play Cora, actually, in the film adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel Endless Night.

So there you have it.

Easy to miss, but boom.

We'll examine three books here that span three decades.

The ABC murders from 1936, Crooked House from 1949, and Endless Night from 1967.

Let's start with the ABC murders.

This one feels so incredibly ahead of its time.

It is a bleak look at nature versus nurture.

And that darkness perfectly sets the stage for the final book on our list today.

Which pushes that psychological tread even further, Endless Night, published in 1967.

She wrote this in her late 70s.