The Unexpected Guest

by Agatha Christie

Overview

A classic from Agatha Christie, the original queen of mystery.

When a stranger runs his car into a ditch in dense fog in South Wales and makes his way to an isolated house, he discovers a woman standing over the dead body of her wheelchair-bound husband, gun in her hand. She admits to murder, and the unexpected guest offers to help her concoct a cover story.

But is it possible that Laura Warwick did not commit the murder after all? If so, who is she shielding? The house seems full of possible suspects.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062006776
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/10/2010
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	100
File size:	266 KB

About the Author

Agatha Christie is the best-selling author of all time. She wrote eighty crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and several other books. Her books have sold roughly four billion copies and have been translated into 45 languages. She is the creator of the two most enduring figures in crime literature-Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple-and author of The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of modern theatre. Christie was born in Torquay, Devon in 1890. She died in 1976 in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.

Charles Osborne has an MA in German and has lectured at colleges in Athens and Prague. For many years he has translated for film and television companies in Germany and Austria.

Date of Birth:

September 15, 1890

Date of Death:

January 12, 1976

Place of Birth:

Torquay, Devon, England

Education:

Home schooling

Website:

http://www.agathachristie.com

Editorial Reviews

Bookseller Reviews

Michael Starkwedder encounters all the problems that rural Wales is known fir: Ditches adjacent to poorly-lit roads and a corpse in the first house you visit. This charming Agatha Christie cozy derives from a 1956 drama that Ms. Christie never reworked into novel. Without denting the original, Charles Osborne does the trick. As for Starkwedder, we must confess that he slips into a series of small fibs that render this evening less pleasant than ours.

Barnes & Noble, Inc.

The Unexpected Guest is a twist-filled tale of murder in a country house in Wales, is the second Christie stage play adapted as a novel by Charles Osborne; and, as with last year's best-selling Black Coffee, the results are smooth and bracing.
— Wall Street Journal

Tom Nolan

Christie biographer Osborne's second novelization of a Christie play (Black Coffee, 1998) opens with a wonderfully arresting scene: engineer Michael Starkwedder, having run his car into a ditch while poking around the Welsh countryside looking at houses, enters Richard Warwick's house looking for help, only to find the man himself, a big-game hunter now confined to a wheelchair, shot to death. When Richard's wife Laura confesses to the killing, Starkwedder, struck by sympathy for her sufferings at the hands of this brute, encourages her to fake evidence against a fictitious intruder for Inspector Thomas and his quotation-spouting sergeant to find. Veteran readers of the author's work will watch in fascination, secure in the knowledge that Starkwedder and Laura aren't the only ones in the household playing fast and loose, and untroubled by the certainty that the other intimates—Richard's mother, his retarded half-brother, his housekeeper and valet, a neighbor standing for Parliament—have no more moving parts than necessary to keep the twists coming. It's not clear what Christie, who got into playwriting in mid-career because she thought other writers' stage adaptations of her novels too slavish and unsimplified, would have thought of Osborne's close, stingy reworking of her 1958 play. Here, though, Osborne, working with much less creaky material than Black Coffee, manages a few surprises worthy of his master.

Kirkus Reviews

"Christie cleverly shifts suspicion and parcels out new facts and perspectives in marvelous fashion, proving ingeniously that the obvious isn't always obvious." - Publishers Weekly

"Osborne...manages a few surprises worthy of his master." - Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher