The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories

This is collection of short stories, so some of them are better than others. The only one I really disliked is "The Fourth Man". My favorites were the title story, "Philomel Cottage", and "Where There's a Will" (should have a been an episode of Suspense!). ( )

Lots of fine twists to the spaghetti. Christie is particularly well served by the short form/script because of her focus on plot. I think I read the play first, then the story for comparison.

Library copies ( )

Lots of fine twists to the spaghetti. Christie is particularly well served by the short form/script because of her focus on plot. I think I read the play first, then the story for comparison.

Library copies ( )

I love the short story anthologies. This was the third one I read this summer. Included are the following:

The Witness for the Prosecution is the story from which the title comes from. This is a story where the crime is what it seems but the people are not.

The Fourth Man was a very unusual story, one I had to give a great deal of thought to. It was not one of the regular mysteries with a cut and dried solution at the end. You are asked to suspend your disbelief and consider if souls can switch bodies.

S.O.S. is another one of the people switching mysteries Christie is so good at.

Where There's a Will is a very clever story of a nephew who attempts to speed up the receiving of his inheritance through some wicked means and of course gets exactly what he deserves.

The Mystery of the Blue jar was a favorite. In this story super natural elements are used to set up a con job.

Sing a Song of sixpence was one of the "closed door" type of mysteries where one of the people present has to be the murderer. The man who was brought in to solve the mystery was an acquaintance of one of the suspects. They had a May December type romance. I don't know if it was acceptable in Christie's time but not too many people today would be down with a seventeen year old having sexual relations with an old man. It came off very strange when he was waxing on how attractive he found teenagers.

The Mystery of the Spanish Shawl was another con type mystery evocative of The Blue Jar.

Philomel Cottage was another favorite. In it a woman may end up a victim of her new husband or is it the other way around.

Accident was another story that didn't play out the way you thought it would. You think the victim is going to be one person and it ends up being someone else.

The final story is a Hercule Poirot one, The Second Gong. Poirot is called to an estate to do an investigation and if you know Poirot he always gets his man.

This was enjoyable collection of short stories from the master of mystery. This is a highly recommended read. ( )

This was a delightful discovery of a volume of short mysteries, only one of which was familiar to me—the title story which was the basis for a famous play. Except for the last story, featuring Hercule Poirot, these were tales about ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances and were nicel surprises for me. ( )