The Mousetrap: A Play

4.5★ I can see why this play enjoyed such a long run! Great take on the country home mystery, a new guest house (sort of like a bed & breakfast but serving all meals) opens one winter day, coincidentally when a blizzard is occurring. On the radio as the play opens is the news of a murder in London...

I am a Christie fan but for some reason have never read this play before. It is very well done and she manages to make the audience suspect each person in turn and yet the guilty person is still a surprise! Sadly, it might not appeal to today's young people as the plot does depend on the murderer cutting the telephone wire to isolate the house even more -- the prevalence today of cell phones has made this whole subgenre of mysteries show more obsolete (or at least dependent on exotic circumstances).


Note: I read this in the omnibus "The Mousetrap and Other Plays" show less

See How They Run
A review of the Concord Theatricals/Samuel French paperback (2010) of the Samuel French original playscript (performed in 1952, published in 1954) adapted from the short story "Three Blind Mice" published in Cosmopolitan (May 1948) and collected in [book:Three Blind Mice and Other Stories|13622161] (US, 1950) and an earlier BBC radio play (May 1947).

PARAVICINI. Have you references with these guests of yours?
MOLLIE. Is that usual? (She turns to PARAVICINI) I always thought people just—just came?
PARAVICINI. It is advisable to know a little about the people who sleep under your roof.

The hosts and an odd assortment of guests at the Monkwell Manor Guest House are snowed in and a suspected murderer is among them. A show more policeman manages to arrive by skiing through the storm. But then a guest is murdered and the policeman's skis have disappeared. Can the murderer be stopped before anyone else is killed?

This is one of the top Christie twist endings and it is interesting to note that it went through several stages as a radio play and short story before taking its final form as the stage play that has been running continuously in London's West End since its opening in 1952 (with a few years break for the COVID pandemic). It is considered the longest running play in the world, having hit 30,000 performances in 2025.

This play counts against my Complete Agatha Christie binge goal, so I have 18 novels (including 5 remaining Westmacotts), 5 short story collections, 10.5* theatrical plays (+ several harder to find 1-act radio plays) and 1 autobiography left to go. If my count is wrong I'll adjust it as I get nearer to the end of my target.

Footnote
* I am counting Towards Zero stage play version #1 (1945) and Towards Zero stage play version #2 (1956) each as 1/2 of a play.

Trivia and Links
Curiously, despite the large number of film and TV adaptations of Agatha Christie works, there has never been an English language screen adaptation of The Mousetrap. Several foreign language adaptations have been made though and you can see them listed at Wikipedia.

As best as I know, the 10 and 1/2 remaining full length plays on my list are:
Black Coffee (1930).
The Secret of Chimneys (1931) [was a lost play not on my original list, it was rediscovered and finally performed in 2003].
The Stranger (1932).
Akhnaton (1937).
And Then There Were None (1939).
Murder on the Nile (1944).
Towards Zero (Version #1) (1945).
Spider's Web (1954).
A Daughter's A Daughter (1956).
The Unexpected Guest (1958).
Fiddlers Three (1972).
In addition there are several full length plays that have been posthumously adapted from Agatha Christie novels by other people, but I am not counting them as part of the canon. For a complete listing see the works at Concord Theatricals listed under Agatha Christie.
The above list does not include the shorter one-act plays and/or radio plays which I still have to investigate. show less

Tras haberse cometido un asesinato en Londres, el sargento de policía Trotter se presenta en un pequeño hotel alejado de la capital y aislado por la nieve para advertir a sus moradores que el asesino está a punto de llegar con el propósito de cometer otro crimen. Nadie parece dar crédito a las palabras del agente, pero, cuando uno de los huéspedes es asesinado, todos comprenden, alarmados, que el criminal se encuentra ya en el hotel y debe ser uno de ellos... De hecho, algunos personajes se comportan de un modo extrañamente excéntrico y casi todos tienen algo que ocultar, un pasado con experiencias traumáticas que los atormenta hasta el punto de constituirse en una carga demasiado pesada. La habilidad con que Agatha Christie show more maneja la intriga y el desenlace absolutamente inesperado de la historia han convertido a esta obra en la más representada de toda la historia del teatro. show less