Endless Night by Agatha Christie

 

Endless Night by Agatha Christie.

This edition published 9th February 2017 by Harper Collins.

From the cover of the book:

Gipsy’s Acre was a truly beautiful upland site with views out to sea – and in Michael Rogers it stirred a child-like fantasy.

There, amongst the dark fir trees, he planned to build a house, find a girl and live happily ever after.

Yet, as he left the village, a shadow of menace hung over the land. For this was the place where accidents happened. Perhaps Michael should have heeded the locals’ warnings: ‘There’s no luck for them as meddles with Gipsy’s Acre.’

Michael Rogers is a man who is about to learn the true meaning of the old saying ‘In my end is my beginning…’

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Michael Rogers is a man who has never felt the need to follow convention and settle down. His life has been spent going with the flow, moving from job to job, and woman to woman, as his will takes him. But when he comes to beautiful Gypsy's Acre in Devon, he knows that this is the place he wants to build a house, and make a home with a woman he can truly love - and as luck would have it, chance has just brought to him heiress Fenella (Ellie) Guteman, the woman of his dreams.

Michael and Ellie fall in love, despite the gulf in their backgrounds, and settle down to happily married life in the new modern house they have built overlooking the sea. However, Gypsy's Acre comes with a curse. Those who live here are asking for darkness to come calling...

Endless Night is an Agatha Christie story like no other I have read before. Told in a single person narrative from Michael Rogers, who takes us through his history with Gypsy's Acre and the woman who brings him the fortune he needs to make his desires come true, it is pervaded with an overwhelming sense of menace from beginning to end. Rogers is compelling narrator, and he brings in a small and intimate cast of friends and relations around him and Ellie as he spins his tragic tale.

It is apparent from the very beginning of this story that a happy ending is not going to be on the cards, but Christie well and truly leads you down the garden path about the intentions of practically every character here with a bevy of red herrings, before the truth about what is going on hits you full-square between the eyes in the most shocking fashion. In fact this is the first time I have had to rewind a Christie audio book (here delightfully narrated by my old favourite Hugh Fraser) to re-play the most devastating reveal from her devious imagination ever, even though she frequently blindsides me with her stories! It is a corker!

This is my rather offbeat choice for this month's #ReadChristie2023 challenge, which explores love/lust in her books, and as usual, I alternated between reading the text and listening to the audio book. This story is all about how the lines between love, lust, greed and obsession can become blurred, and it fits the bill perfectly. 

Endless Night is available to buy now in multiple formats.

About the author:

Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.