Crooked House

I liked this! Family drama plus murder, what's not to like? One piece of nepotistic strangeness is that the narrator is the son of a Scotland Yard person, and engaged to a member of the family that experienced the murder, and yet, all the family members spoke freely to him without totally questioning what the hell he was doing in the house post-murder asking such nosy questions? That's a minor point, however. I felt surprised, although not shocked, by the end, and appreciated the clip at which this little mystery moved along.

After years of watching Murder, She Wrote and other televised Agatha Christie stories, I have finally read my first book written by her. Check that off the “someday has never come” list. Update I have previously listened to an audio book written by Christie. I guess for those purists who don't count audiobooks, the previous statement hold true....***

This was a slow starter for me and at first I had some challenges keeping characters straight. However, once about a third of the way through, the story grabbed hold and took off. I tried to guess the ending as I went along, and even when I disagreed with Charles on a suspicion, like Charles, I was surprised by the ending and saw all the clues were there.

I like that this book got me thinking with its complexity but wasn't so complex that I needed a notebook to keep everything straight. I will definitely look into more Christie books.

Well she did it again, I was stumped again. Oh, I may have had ideas, I thought all of them could have done it at some point (so technically I was right at least once, like a stopped clock)!

Brilliantly written little book that kept me gripped until the end. No wonder it was one of Christie's favourites of her works.

This is one of Christie's better stories. I have been reading through her mysteries chronologically and have found a lot of patterns in most of her books, but this one does a great job of telling the story in an original way. It's both creepy and sad, with a lot of symbolism around the “crooked” nature of people. The only downside is the frustratingly slow narrator. You will always be one step ahead of him. But beware, you will also be one step behind Christie.

PS The recent movie adaption of Crooked House was very good. I would argue better than the book, which I don't say often.