Crooked House

By Agatha Christie

Author

Agatha Christie died in 1976, but she is still alive as the queen of crime. She wrote 77 detective novels, which are translated into every major language. Her sales are calculated in tens of millions. A lot of her books have appeared in films, radio programmes and stage plays based on her books. She began writing at the end of the First World War. Christie wrote also romantic novels, several plays and a book of poems. Two characters she drew and which are world-famous are always linked to her person: Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.

Plot

The story begins as Charles Hayward and Sophia Leonides meet and fall in love in Egypt (Cairo) towards the end of the First World War. They want to marry in England, but shortly before the marriage, Sophia's grandfather dies, and she thinks that he has been murdered. As nobody believes her, she asks Charles' father, assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard for help. They find out that Aristides' death was not naturally caused. His death was the result of an overdoses of physosigmine, also known as eserine. Aristide suffered from diabetes and he had regular injections of insulin. Someone must have exchanged the medicaments and so Brenda, his young wife, has injected him eserine and not insulin. Everybody in the house comes and goes freely and the insulin is not locked up and so everybody could have been the murder. Because Charles knows the family, his father wants him to examine the members of the family, living contentedly in a large gabled house called Suinly Dean in a suburb of London. The first suspicion is that Brenda has killed her man, because she wanted to inherit his money. On the day of Aristide's death, Brenda injected him the false insulin. She also has a love affair with the house teacher. Then suddenly the nanny dies because she drank the cocoa of Josephine, Aristide's granddaughter. After some determinations, they find out that digitalis was in the drink. Charles finds Josephine's diary where he reads that she killed Aristide. In the evening he wants to arrest her, but she and her aunt Edith have motor accident and both die. But this was intentional - Edith knew that Josephine killed Aristide and she wanted to take the blame because she did not want the child to suffer for her crime. In the end Charles and Sophia could marry.

Characters:

Aristide arrived in England when he was 24, he is Greek. He became a big business man and was behind of the well known restaurants of London. He had no friends, only his family. He had many reverses too: his wife died of pneumonia in 1905 and six children died of serious circumstances. He married again, a 24-year old woman. He suffered of diabetes and therefore had regular injections of insulin. He really liked the luxury, but loved his family and therefore gave them all money and freedom. They kept devoted to him.

Josephine is about 11 or 12 years old. She is an ugly, ghoulish child and everything else than ordinary. She had been born with a kink. She hated her grandfather and she was made keen on detecting stuff. She wanted to become a great detective herself. She really knows a good deal about people and liked to make herself look important. Aristide had kept Josephine from school because he was afraid of what she might do. She might have been a source of danger to others and so she hated him. She killed him because he forbid her everything.

Opinion:

I have chosen the book, because I knew that Agatha Christie is a famous author. I like criminal stories very much, because they are very thrilling. Sometimes I could not stop reading. Through the whole story you don't except that Josephine is the murder. You think that she wants to help the police. The book shows us that you can't trust everyone and that not every child says the truth and is innocent.