I’m excited to share that I have another guest post up on the lovely period-drama website Willow and Thatch. “Movie vs. Book: Crooked House” is the first in an ongoing series exploring recent adaptations of Agatha Christie’s novels. Crooked House, adapted in 2017, explores the dark family secrets unearthed when detective Charles Hayward begins investigating the mysterious death of his lover’s grandfather. The film stars Max Irons, Stefanie Martini, Glenn Close, Christina Hendricks, Gillian Anderson, Terence Stamp (who in my mind is the most menacing actor around), and Julian Sands. You can check out my post here.
I’ve been a Christie fan since middle school, when my mom first played us an audiobook dramatization of Murder on the Orient Express and The Mystery of the Blue Train (on cassette tape, no less!). After that, my sister and I devoured dramatized Christies, and she moved on to unabridged audiobooks as well as the Joan Hickson and David Suchet film adaptations, with me following close behind. Oh, and we actually read some of the originals, too.
Crooked House stands out to me not because of the investigation–it’s a fairly standard detective inquiry–but because of its whopper of an ending. I once heard that Christie used to write her books without knowing the identity of the murderer, and only when she reached the end would she choose the most unlikely character to be her culprit. That story may be apocryphal, but it sure would make sense given the solution of Crooked House.
If you’d like to know what I thought of the book and its 2017 adaptation, head on over to Willow and Thatch.
Abby Murphy 