While serving a sentence for killing his mother - a crime he insisted he didn't commit - Jacko Argyle dies in prison. Two years later, the man who could have supported Jacko's alibi suddenly turns up. It appears that Jacko was innocent... and that the murderer is part of the surviving family.

This book is brilliant, not only for the ‘who killed her’ question that’s always fun to try and answer, but also for the insights in the situation of innocent people who get entangled in a murder case, as suspects. I enjoyed reading this book, even though this book didn’t contain one of her recurring detectives. There were some elements that came falling out of the sky though, at least it felt like that for me, particularly an event at the end of the book, that keep this book from receiving the highest score. Still, a good book and I definitely recommend it. ( )

I started reading this on a plane and thought how much more appropriate it would have been to read "Death in the Clouds".... the book started off in a style which to me as an avid Christie fan was unfamiliar. Nevertheless the book did contain a good deal of the wit and humour that is expected in Christie's novels and presented an interesting "closed room" murder mystery. The problem was the room was too tightly closed and everyone had an alibi as tight as a drum. Backed into a corner many second rate writers resort to the device of deus ex machina to resolve the unresolvable.I was disapponited that Christie fell back on this unsatisfying method of storytelling. The evidence of a child came out of the blue and was so nebulous as to signify very little in the unfolding of the tale, whilst the reader does not get to share in the detections of Dr. Calgary, and the ending of the novel was rather dubious. As an entertainment this was a perfect piece of airport reading. ( )

Ordeal by Innocence is one of Agatha Christie’s later ‘stand-alone’ novels, i.e. it features neither Poirot nor Miss Marple.

The setup is quite simple: the wealthy, do-gooder matriarch of a family of adopted children has been murdered, it seems, by one of her now-adult charges, who’s been duly convicted, and has died in prison. But then an unexpected witness shows up with an iron-clad alibi for the unfortunate convict, and the whole case is opened up again, sowing doubt and discord amongst the widower and his surviving children.

This is not an unflawed effort – it’s longer than it needs to be, with too much dialogue spent recapping the facts of the case.

But it’s an interesting read. I’m particularly fond of Christie’s recurring theme – worked out in detail here – of nature vs. nurture in the development of personality and temperament. Christie critically examines the blank-slate theory of development (although she would not have known it by that name) and finds it sorely lacking.

Recommended. ( )

Another of her books without Poirot or Miss Marple. Jacko Argyle died in prison having been convicted for killing his mother, except he is innocent and Dr Calgary, the man who proves Jacko innocent, is stunned by how disturbed Jacko's family are by his revelation as this means that one of them must be guilty. Lots of twists and turns to this plot and, of course, more death, but the revelation of the murderer and the motive is satisfactory. ( )

Amusing aggie, oddly enough it was filmed as a Miss Marple and she's not in it! ( )