crooked house agatha christie book review

Among the suspects are the victim's eccentric sister-in-law (Glenn Close), his spoilt young widow (Christina Hendricks) and his permanently sozzled daughter-in-law (Gillian Anderson). Max Irons stars as the military spy-turned-private detective (and fiancé of the old man's granddaughter) who is tasked with exposing the killer. It’s almost thriller-esque.Three generations of a well-to-do family gather at a country house after the death of its patriarch in this misfiring adaptation of a postwar Agatha Christie novel. I would say this book has one of Christie’s best endings, certainly one of the most shocking, if not plot-wise (there are always people who figure out the mystery, even if I’m not one of them) then certainly in terms of emotion.

One of the reasons this one is so fun is that the Leonides family is large and chaotic, and they have tangled, codependent lives with one another (mostly filled with love, but still, this is the reason for the title of the book), because they all live in the house together. Charles decides to poke around the Three Gables house and see if he can ferret out a murderer, with the approval of Scotland Yard. Charles’s father is an assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard, so he is familiar with policing, and has information on the case the family doesn’t. Soon after that happens, Charles is headed back to England and the first stop he makes is to see Sophia, but it turns out her grandfather-wealthy patriarch Aristide Leonides-has recently been murdered, and Sophia doesn’t want to marry until his murder has been solved. They get engaged to marry, but put off the wedding until after the war is over. Our main character in Crooked House is Charles Hayward, who meets Sophia Leonides in Cairo at the tail end of WWII. But it flows so seamlessly here! And I liked all the characters, found the mystery intriguing, and didn’t guess the ending (and it was a good one!) A lot of the time, as a mystery fan when encountering books with non-detective main characters, there is a lot of disbelief suspension going on, because it’s difficult to find plausible reasons for non-detectives to be involved in solving murders (one of the many reasons I have such a hard time with cozy mysteries). It’s been a month since I’ve finished so I’ve had some time to think (though I do of course wish I’d written the review right away, but alas) and I think the reason that I loved this one so much is that it’s one of the few non-detective mystery novels to get the mystery part right and have it be believable.

Crooked house agatha christie book review