Crooked House  (English, Paperback, Christie A.)

This book is about a murder story that takes place during the end of World War II.

Summary Of The Book

The story revolves around the Leonides family whose head is the rich old man Aristide. Three generations of the family live together. His sister-in-law Edith takes care of the household matters after his wife died. Aristide remarries and his new wife Brenda is younger than him by several years.

She has an illicit love affair with his grandchildren's tutor. Aristide is killed under mysterious circumstances.

The first-person narrator of the story, Charles Hayward, who is a young man meets Sophia Leonides, granddaughter of Aristide who works for the foreign office when he was working in Cairo and they fall in love. When Hayward returns home he finds the obituary of Sophia's grandfather. Sophia tells her fiance, Charles Hayward that until the killer is arrested they cannot marry. Charles' father being the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, he is able to participate in the investigation with the detective, Chief Inspector Taverne who is assigned to the case.

The book has a series of characters including an old nanny, a spinster aunt, a scientist, an actress, two brothers having a strained relationship, an angry teenager, and more members of a very strange family. All of them live together in a crooked house. All of them have a cruel element in themselves and anyone could have been the killer.

About Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie born on September 15, 1890 was a British crime writer of novels, plays, and short stories.

Some of her other popular books include Murder On Orient Express, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Death On The Nile, and A Murder is Announced.

She is one of the bestselling novelists of the century. Over a billion copies of her books in the English language and another billion in over 100 foreign languages have been sold. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott. She is well-known for her 66 detective novels and over 15 short story collections. Most of them focus on the investigation of such characters as Miss Jane Marple, Hercule Poirot, and Tommy and Tuppence. According to Index Translationum, Christie is the most translated individual author. The translation of her books has been made into at least 103 languages. In 1955, Christie was the first to receive the Mystery Writers of America's highest honor, the Grand Master Award. In the same year she received an Edgar Award by the MWA for Best Play for Witness for the Prosecution. Many of her short stories and books have been filmed, and many have been adapted for radio, television, comics, and video games. She died on January 12, 1976.