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| Crooked House (Minotaur Mysteries) | 
| Author: Agatha Christie
Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur
Category: Book
List Price: $6.99
Buy New: $1.93
You Save: $5.06 (72%)
New (24) Collectible (6) from $1.93
Avg. Customer Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 268703
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 031298166X
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780312981662
ASIN: 031298166X
Publication Date: August 19, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 WILL SOMEONE LET THE WOMAN SPEAK? May 4, 2008
What "improvements" have been made for the St. Martin's Minotaur edition? There are already major differences in punctuation, word choices, and scene breaks between the original Collins and Dodd Mead editions of this novel. There are further differences between the Dodd Mead editions republished by Random House/Avenel and the Dodd Mead editions republished by Simon & Shuster/Pocket. There are further additions still in the Signet, Bantam, Berkley, and Black Dog & Leventhal editions. For every publishing house putting out her works, there seem to be a new batch of editors altering Agatha Christie's words and the sound of her voice. What's the matter with these publishers? Whose voice do they think we want to hear when we sit down to a novel by Agatha Christie? And what will she sound like twenty years from now? It's frightening that her estate has failed to see the importance of guarding her words as she wrote them. Please tell me I'm not the only one here who senses that a crime has been committed.
 Tedious Christie December 30, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This Christie novel doesn't quite deliver the goods. It's the usual savoir faire: a crumbling family's patriarch is murdered, and his significantly-younger trophy wife is thought to be his killer. The dysfunctional Leonides family thinks the victim's wife might be carrying-on an affair with the live-in tutor. There's plenty of police talk and not nearly enough character development. In fact, one wishes the characters weren't so "Christie," i.e., familar, predictable, etc. Despite a mildly intriguing denouement (which, also, was somewhat predictable), Crooked House lacks fresh characters and gripping dialogue, which makes it a tedious read.
CHRISTIE AT HER BEST June 25, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
By all means, this is one of my favorite Agatha Christie novels. The denoument is so gripping I couldn't put the book down, even after I finished reading it. I just immediately started reviewing the clues again. It was all there in the open to see. Pure genius! Most of the other reviewers have summarized the plot, so I won't rehash it. Excellent, quick read.
 WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS April 29, 2007
CROOKED HOUSE was written in 1949. The detective is not Hercule Poirot nor Mrs. Marple but Charles Hayward, the son of an eminent Scotland Yard superintendent, who's in love with Sofia Leonides whose grandfather has just been poisoned. The book is a good example of the "all in the family" murder genre as Aristide Leonides was murdered in the family home and the prime suspects are his own wife, his sister-in-law, his sons, their wives and his grandchildren.
As often in the Agatha Christie novels of that period, there aren't many descriptions of London or even of the "crooked" Leonides house in the book. CROOKED HOUSE is pure Christie style : a lot of dialogs and psychological considerations carried out per se by Charles Hayward. In addition to the final twist which seems to have been very innovative and provocative in 1949, American radios refusing to broadcast the radio adaptation of the novel, I liked very much, in a detective story, the fact that nor the detective, nor the police inspectors could find the identity of the murderer(s).
A book for the week-end.
Great Twist. March 12, 2007
THis is not as scary as "then there were none" but I really like the twist at the end of the story. She turns steriotypes on their head and goes for someone people don't usually think of as a culprit and yet the guilty person fit6s the criteria like a glove. Nice!
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