Then you have Brenda Leonides, Aristide’s widow. She’s not averse to spending her father in law’s money on unsuccessful play’s and seems to think that Aristide’s death is an ideal opportunity to put on a west-end play. Magda West is also a colourful character, you can’t always tell who the woman is as she always seems to be playing one part or another. Charles certainly gleans more information from her than any of the other witnesses that he talks to. I particularly liked Josephine, the 12-year-old sister of Sophia who is spotted snooping around the house listening in on private conversations. All the family stand to gain something from the old man’s death and all have a motive for the murder.Īnd the characters are all so well developed.

This one is no different, it’s a very well crafted plot and you never quite know who the killer is right until the very end. You just know that when you are reading an Agatha Christie novel you will be taken on a journey full of misdirection and red-herrings. All the family knew what it could do to the old man so nobody was let off the hook here. The eserine was from Aristide’s eye medicine. Eserine poisoning administered via an insulin injection. The actual cause of death is a little unusual in this story.

The whole of the Leonides family is living under the same roof.Īnd they all lived together in a little crooked house The period is the ’40s, just after the war, and the large house in question is Three Gables in Swinly Dean, the crooked house of the title. There’s a familiar feel about the story it takes place for the most part in a large house, with a well-defined group of suspects, and an amateur detective helping out the police. This time around it’s written from the point of view of Charles Hayward who is hoping to marry the beautiful Sophia Leonides once the small matter of murder has been solved. A novel where neither Hercule Poirot nor Jane Marple appear, but it’s still a great whodunnit. Well, Crooked House is another wonderfully crafted book by Dame Agatha Christie. And he’s certain that in a crooked house such as Three Gables, no one’s on the level… My Review But criminologist Charles Hayward is casting his own doubts on the innocence of the entire Leonides brood. In fact, suspicion has already fallen on his luscious widow, a cunning beauty fifty years his junior, set to inherit a sizeable fortune, and rumoured to be carrying on with a strapping young tutor comfortably ensconced in the family estate. (Blurb for Crooked House from Goodreads) In the sprawling, a half-timbered mansion in the affluent suburb of Swinly Dean, Aristide Leonides lies dead from barbiturate poisoning.

Crooked house novel