Spider’s Web
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A full-length novel by Charles Osborne adapted from Agatha Christie’s stage play, in which a diplomat’s wife finds a body that mustn’t be discovered…
Following BLACK COFFEE and THE UNEXPECTED GUEST comes the final Agatha Christie play novelisation, bringing her superb storytelling to a new legion of fans.
Clarissa, the wife of a Foreign Office diplomat, is given to daydreaming. ‘Supposing I were to come down one morning and find a dead body in the library, what should I do?’ she muses.
Clarissa has her chance to find out when she discovers a body in the drawing-room of her house in Kent. Desperate to dispose of the body before her husband comes home with an important foreign politician, Clarissa persuades her three house guests to become accessories and accomplices. It seems that the murdered man was not unknown to certain members of the house party (but which ones?), and the search begins for the murderer and the motive, while at the same time trying to persuade a police inspector that there has been no murder at all…
Reviews
‘Reads like authentic, vintage Christie. I feel sure Agatha would be proud to have written it.’
Mathew Prichard, Agatha Christie’s grandson, on BLACK COFFEE
‘Osborne has again enhanced the original.’
Sunday Telegraph, on THE UNEXPECTED GUEST
About the author
Agatha Christie was born in Torquay in 1890 and became the best-selling novelist in history. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, introduced us to Hercule Poirot, the most popular detective since Sherlock Holmes. She is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime and her works have sold over two billion copies – 80 crime books, 19 plays, and six novels under the name of Mary Westmacott.
Charles Osborne was born in Brisbane in 1927. He is known internationally as an authority on opera, though has had a lifelong passion for Agatha Christie’s works. His previous books include The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Osborne completes his homage to Christie with this third and final adaptation of an original Christie play, following Black Coffee (1998) and The Unexpected Guest (1999). Though the play was written in 1954, the story suffers little from the passage of time, and aside from the static setting, reads well as a novel. Christie's exquisite timing and clever sleight-of-mind tricks are a delight, while Osborne has the good sense not to embroider the tale. A typical closed cast of characters occupies the temporary country home of Henry and Clarissa Hailsham-Brown: the seemingly scatterbrained Clarissa; her stepdaughter, Pippa; the odious Oliver Costello, who has married Pippa's mother; Sir Rowland Delahaye, Clarissa's godfather and a man of honor; an outspoken gardener; a butler; a cook; and Inspector Lord, the rather diffident policeman. When Clarissa discovers a body in the drawing room, she decides that it mustn't be found there. Her plans to dispose of the body are interrupted by the arrival of a rather diffident policeman, Inspector Lord, who has come to check out an anonymous tip that a murder has been committed. Christie's bag of tricks includes hidden doorways, secret drawers, French windows and concealed identitiesDall used to amusing effect. As with Osborne's previous novelizations, this is a welcome addition to the Christie canon and is sure to reach mystery bestseller lists. The cover, with a spider in a web against a green faux-marble background, is as catchy as they come.
