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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
'Of misty nights, murder and french windows', 8 May 2002
By A Customer
Penned in only four weeks this Agatha Christie murder mystery was originally written as a play in 1958, but has recently been adapted as a novel by Charles Osborne. It was written, it seemed, to answer back the critics who had slated her previous play, 'Verdict' and was a big success at the time.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 !
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£4.99
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