Crooked House

I am a huge Agatha Christie (15 /09/1890—12/12/1976) fan. I have possibly all of her books, and nearly all the television and film versions of her works, starring a variety of Hercule Poirots (my best is David Suchet) and Miss Marple (Margaret Rutherford, Joan Hickson and Julia McKenzie tops). According to the Guinness Book of records, Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. Often referred to as the “Queen of Crime,” she is also regarded as a master of suspense, plotting, and characterisation.

Recently I started rereading her work and began with Crooked House, one of the seven novels inspired by nursery rhymes. Agatha Christie described this as her favourite book. She says in the author’s foreword: “This book is one of my own special favourites. I saved it up for years, thinking about it, working it out, saying to myself, ‘One day when I’ve plenty of time, and want to really enjoy myself—I’ll begin it! … Crooked House was pure pleasure.’”

Three generations of the Leonides family live together under the roof of wealthy patriarch Aristide. His first wife died; her sister Edith has cared for the household since then. His second wife is the indolent Brenda, decades his junior, who exchanges love letters with the grandchildren's tutor, Laurence Brown. After Aristide is poisoned by his own eye medicine (eserine), his granddaughter Sophia tells narrator and fiancé Charles Hayward that they cannot marry until the killer is apprehended. Charles' father "The Old Man" is the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, so Charles investigates from the inside along with assigned detective, Chief Inspector Taverner. It seems that everyone could have a motive. The ridiculously young wife Brenda wants to be free to marry the tutor. Then there’s Roger, the eldest son who needs money to prop up his tottering business. Second son Philip has always been jealous of Roger. Not to mention their wives (Clemency and Magda), who could also have motive for various financial reasons. Josephine, Aristides’s precocious granddaughter, tells Charles that the police are stupid and she has already worked out who the killer is, along with copious notes and clues in her little black notebook. When Josephine is attacked and Nanny is mysteriously poisoned by hot chocolate after Brenda and the tutor are arrested, the danger escalates to a surprise finish.

This was the first time I’d read the book and it was great. The pace is good, the characters real (we have all met them somewhere along life’s path) and the suspense chilling. I am quite good at guessing the killer in various crime books, but this one stumped (and shocked) me completely. Charles is excellent as the sometimes-bumbling amateur sleuth. Sophia is sharp-witted and courageous. There’s a Roger and a Magda in every family. The family are at once torn apart and cling together in this time of adversity and stalking danger. Highly enjoyable! (A lesson about making a watertight will included!) ( )

Charles Hayward has it pretty good. He survived the Second World War, is comfortably well-off, young and even has the prospect of marriage, with the lovely Sophia Leonides. But when Charles returns to England, he learns that Sophia's grandfather, noted businessman Aristide Leonides, has died. There's suspicion of foul play. Sophia does not want a shadow of doubt cast on her family as a result of the death, so she asks Charles to help find out the truth.

Agatha Christie herself said that Crooked House was one of her personal favourites, a "pure pleasure" to write. That pleasure comes across in the writing: Charles' narration is light and charming without being excessively "what ho, old chap!" Sophia is a smart, sensible lady, and her family is maddeningly eccentric and amusing. (Agatha must have enjoyed writing for Sophia's mother, Magda, in particular -- such carryings-on!)

I read this in the space of a couple of hours and could not put it down. Charles made a good investigator, using his somewhat privileged position as prospective relative-by-marriage to winkle confidences out of the family, as well as being able to draw upon information provided by his father, the Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard. I was astounded to read the solution and even found a few tears running down my face. A fair few, actually. I haven't cried so much at an Agatha novel since Curtain (although this was not quite as upsetting, and the upset was for a different reason). Highly recommended for Christie fans. ( )

In an author's foreword Agatha Christie says this was a plot she had thought through for many years.

The action takes place just after the second world war near London. Charles Hayward and Sophia Leonides had met two years earlier in Egypt and were determined to meet again after the war was over.

They are back in London and have arranged to meet when Charles learns that Sophia's grandfather has been murdered. Charles' father, a member of Scotland Yard, suggests that Charles try to get an "inside" view of the family, talk to family members, to see if one is a murderer. We see events from Charles' point of view, and it is he who finally assembles the evidence, although in a sense a family member beat him to it.

This is a book that keeps the reader guessing, although I have to admit that about a quarter of the way from the end I was pretty sure I knew who the murderer was. That's when, true to form, Agatha Christie threw a final red herring on the path.

There's some interesting discussion of what makes a murderer. Charles' father who is a Scotland Yard Commander, believes that most murders are committed by family members because it is oily situations that the depth of hatred and frustration that precedes murder will occur. When the identity of the murderer is revealed he says he had known it for some time. ( )

In a sprawling mansion in the English countryside, the extremely affluent but extremely elderly owner lies dead on the floor of suspected barbiturate poisoning. An accident? Not likely when suspicion has already fallen on Aristide Leonides' luscious but grieving widow who is fifty years his junior and set to inherit his sizable fortune. It is also rumored that the lovely Widow Leonides is having an affair with the strapping young tutor who just happens to live on the family's estate. But Criminologist Charles Howard has his doubts about the entire Leonides' clan. He knows them intimately and also knows that in a household as shaky as Three Gables, nobody is on the level.

I really enjoyed this book very much. I had actually never read it before but it was a very quick and absorbing read. I give this book an A! ( )

Crooked House is a dark but enjoyable ‘standalone’ murder mystery.

Its first-person narrator, Charles Hayward, has met Sophia in Egypt, and they’ve hit it off. Marriage beckons! But first he must meet her family . . . .

But even before Charles can make it to his amour’s home upon his return to England, he sees a notice in the newspaper: her grandfather, one Aristide Leonides, has died, aged 85. At first this seems ordinary enough, but it’s nothing of the sort. Murder is the air, and Charles decides that no scandal will stand in the way of his future happiness, so he insinuates himself into the Leonides’ sprawling household (and yes, the house itself is actually crooked, too).

What he finds is a circle of suspects right out of central casting – Aristide’s young and disaffected second wife, a nervous tutor who seems to have the hots for her, Aristide’s two flawed sons and their equally suspicious wives – and more.

Crooked House is not among the best of Christie’s novels (although in her autobiography she names it as one of her own favorites), but it has a creepiness and increasing sense of urgency that make for an enjoyable and memorable read.

Recommended. ( )