Crooked House by Agatha Christie

 

Crooked House by Agatha Christie.

This edition published 9th February 2017 by Harper Collins.

Originally published 1949.

From the cover of the book:

A wealthy Greek businessman is found dead at his London home…

The Leonides were one big happy family living in a sprawling, ramshackle mansion. That was until the head of the household, Aristide, was murdered with a fatal barbiturate injection.

Suspicion naturally falls on the old man’s young widow, fifty years his junior. But the murderer has reckoned without the tenacity of Charles Hayward, fiance of the late millionare’s granddaughter…

***********

At the end of World War II, Charles Hayward is stationed in Cairo, where he falls in love with Sophia Leonides, a successful young woman working for the Foreign Office. It is two years before he returns to England, but their reunion is bittersweet. Sophia's grandfather, wealthy tycoon Aristide Leonides, has just been murdered, and she is unwilling to consent to marriage until the guilty party has been found.

Charles, who is conveniently the son of the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, finds himself at the Leonides' family estate, Three Gables, in the company of Chief Inspector Taverner, to see if he can help with the investigation from the inside - as Sophia's fiancé.

Three Gables is home to several generations of the Leonides family, including Aristide's much younger widow Brenda, who is very unpopular with them all. One of them is guilty of poisoning Aristide, and Brenda is the prime suspect...

This gorgeous stand-alone mystery by Agatha Christie is one I have not read before, and was a delight from start to finish. It is one of Christie's family-focused stories, delving into the dysfunctional goings on in the Leonides dynasty, who live cheek-by-jowl in the curious building known as 'the crooked house'. The presence of a young widow (rumoured to be rather friendly with the grandchildren's tutor) is the prime suspect in the case, but Charles feels sympathy for Brenda, and is not convinced she did it.

Very likeable Charles sets to work sluething out the facts, aided by cryptic clues provided by Aristide's youngest granddaughter, the very odd Josephine, who sneaks about the house writing everyone's secrets in a little black book. The story twists and turns beautifully, and is full of delicious psychological meanderings about the family members' motivations, and their relationships with late Aristide - who it seems was as crooked as his house. Clever old Christie misleads and misdirects as only she can, and even though I though I had solved the mystery, of course, I had not. What a little cracker! 

I enjoyed this immensely via the voice talents of my favourite Hugh Fraser, and it was the perfect vehicle to explore this month's #ReadChristie2025 theme of Amateurs.

Crooked House 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.