The Unexpected Guest: Novelisation (Hardcover)

This new novel, "Unexpected Guest", was from a more complicated story and thus is a more satisfying experience by comparison: and Charles Osborne's knowledge of Christies really show. I suppose anyone who has read his excellent biography on Agatha Christie would know that already. The novel reads like a vintage Christie, and I am very happy with the experience, and would recommend it heartily to not only Christie fans, but to new readers who wants to start of with one of Christie's more exciting plots, without the burden of excessive setups (like Death on the Nile).

Instead of calling the police, he coaxes Laura into telling her story. She provides him with the details of why and how she killed her abusive spouse. Michael agrees to help her hide the truth by blaming it on someone else. Laura chooses MacGregor. The Canadian tourist hates Richard for running over his child in a DUI incident in which the law dropped the charges against the pompous Richard. Sergeant Cadwallader and Inspector Thomas investigate only to learn that the Canadian died two years ago. What is the nest step for Michael and Laura?

BLACK COFFEE, the latest adaptation of an Agatha Christie play, was an entertaining novella that fans fully enjoyed. The second "Agatha light" tale, THE UNEXPECTED GUEST, is an entertaining story that continues to stays true to the twists that became the trademark of the great Ms. Christie. Charles Osborne does a brilliant conversion that will please fans of the famous novelist and bring in new readers who will hunt for one-hundred per cent pure Christie works.

Harriet Klausner

It centres around the grim discovery made by a traveller in South Wales called Michael Starkwedder ('I know it's an unusual name'). After apparently driving his car into a ditch one misty night and stumbling into a nearby house to get help, he finds the body of a murdered man slumped in his wheelchair, and his dazed wife standing in the same room holding a gun. Open and shut case right ? Come on, this is an Agatha Christie tale !

Before you know it a whole host of suspects to this crime emerge (both inside the household and out) and through this maze of deception and trickery the earnest Inspector Thomas and his dreamy sidekick Sergeant Cadwallader (who rather annoyingly keeps quoting poetry) must somehow find the truth.

The murdered man, Richard Warwick, a one-time big game hunter in Africa, had no shortage of enemies, as his disability turned him into a less than endearing character. But who could have been driven to murder him ? His wife Laura Warwick ? Heaven knows she was sorely tested by Richard, but what about MacGregor, the father of a child that Richard had accidentally killed a few years before when he lived in Norfolk ? Can he be traced even ?

Other suspects include the housekeeper, the rather evasive Miss Bennett, a sub-normal boy called Jan, who has a fascination for guns, and Richard's nurse-attendant, Angell. Even Richard's mother, the rather strident Mrs Warwick senior does not seem unduly upset. Julian Farrar, Laura Warwick's secret suitor and an aspiring MP might have had a motive and what of Starkwedder ? Was the unexpected guests arrival purely chance ?

This engrossing play-cum-novel keeps you guessing throughout. As new leads are opened up, old certainties are disproved, until you really have to feel for the police, especially Inspector Thomas who has to try and solve the case with the liability of a sergeant he is lumbered with. Cadwallader's lack of adroitness as a detective is somewhat compensated by the humour he introduces at times, but oh, that poetry !

All the action (save for a couple of scenes in the garden) take place in one room, the study where Richard Warwick's lifeless body was found. The focal point of this room and indeed the whole novel are undoubtedly the french windows, with numerous entries and exits through these portals interplaying with the constant shifting about of the room that the various parties indulge in. Why on earth can't they sit still ?

Like all the other Agatha Christie novels I have read I am careful to minutely examine and weigh up every detail that is revealed (particularly at the start) in the hope of picking up something that 'doesn't quite fit'. I managed it this time, and whilst it was tempting later on to change my mind, I stuck to my guns and was eventually vindicated, but I'm blowed if I'll tell you what it was !