Apr 24, 2004 09:23 AM
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(Updated Apr 24, 2004 09:23 AM)
Title: A Crooked House.
Author: Agatha Christie.
Published in 1949 by Macmillian Publishers.
Available in: Hard cover, pocket book and audio cassette.
I bought the pocket book, at a Second Hand Book Shop, for $3.00 CAD.
ISBN # 1405046295
.:My Review:.
Charles Hayward meets Sophia Leonides, when the both were in Egypt, just before WW II ended. She was working in a department of the British Foreign Ministry.
Just before Charles is ordered to leave Egypt he asks Sophia to marry him. She doesn't give him an answer, or even look at him, but just continues smoking her cigarette.
Charles suddenly realizes they have never talked about her family, so he asks she about them.
She says, ''We all live in Swinly Dean, a suburb of London. We live in a crooked house, with my grandfather. He is over 80 years old and very rich. His second wife, is 50 years younger than him. I have a mother, father, brother, sister, uncle and an aunt by marriage.''
We are only living together now, because of the war and blitzes, (that are happening all over southern England).
Charles looks a little startled when she says she lives in a crooked house.
Sophia explains that the house looks crooked because of the halftimbering and gables.
Sophia tells him that her grandfather is very rich, is over 80 years old, that he is only four foot ten inches tall, and was born in Smyrna, Greece.
They keep arguing if it is wise to get engaged in these unsettling times, and decided to wait to decide until they get back to London.
When Charles and Sophia return to England they do get engaged. Sophia takes him home to meet her family.
The crooked house is a large manor that even has a golf course on the property.
One night, war and blitzes Aristide Leonides is murder, when some one puts barbiturate poisoning in his insulin injection.
Who did this dastly deed? One of the family members, the wife's lover, the cook, a maid, and one never can forget the butler!
You'll have to beg borrow or steal the book to find out the answer. On second though, don't steal it!
.:What I Thought While I Was Reading This Book:.
There was a reason that Agatha Christie was called the 'Queen of Crime'. There are so many twist and turns in her plots one never knows until the end who done it!
.:The Author:.
Her first book, called The Mysterious Affair At Styles, was published in 1920. She has written a series of books on Hercules Poirot, Miss Marples and Tommy and Tuppence Beresford.
May of her books have been made into Television series. She died in 1979, when she was 100 years old.
.:My Conclusion:.
If you haven't read this book yet, I highly recommend it to you.
Thank you for reading my review.
©LL2004
