#crooked house
Book #59 of 2022:
Crooked House by Agatha Christie
This 1949 standalone novel is one of the more excellent Agatha Christie mysteries, with a tight plot, a plethora of solid suspects, and a fiendishly distinctive — though totally fair — ultimate solution to its puzzle. I think it helps that the protagonist is not one of the author’s usual investigators, or even a detective at all. He’s a soldier fresh from the second world war who’s arrived at the titular manor intending to propose to his friend who lives there, only to find her distraught at the recent poisoning of her grandfather and unwilling to marry until the murderer has been discovered and the fog of suspicion over the rest of the family lifted. Motives, conflicting wills, and red herrings abound, and the sudden conclusion seems guaranteed to linger in purposefully unresolved tension regardless of whether a reader sees the twist coming or not. I would rank this book alongside The Murder of Roger Ackroyd among the writer’s best, and definitely recommend it as one to pick up outside of her main Poirot and Marple series.
Fun bonus: Christie later named it as one of her favorites, too!
★★★★☆
Like this review?
–Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
–Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next!
https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
–Follow along on Goodreads here!
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6288479-joe-kessler
–Or click here to browse through all my previous// reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog
Post link
