Product Description

Newly-jacketed edition designed to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Christie's faultlessly plotted Witness for The Prosecution and other outstanding plays. The perfect complement to the latest edition of The Mousetrap and Selected Plays (50th Aniversary Edition). Headlining this book is Witness for the Prosecution -- Christie's highly successful stage play which won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best foreign play. A stunning courtroom drama, it tells the story of a scheming wife testifying against her husband in a shocking murder trial. The wild beauty of a seaside house perched high on The Devonshire River Tern provides a stunning back-drop in Towards Zero -- as a psychopathic murderer homes in on the unsuspecting victims. Passion, murder and love are the deadly ingredients in Verdict, making it one of Christie's more unusual thrillers and prompting her to label it 'the best play I have written with the exception of Witness for The Prosecution'. Go Back for Murder tells the story of the young and feisty Carla who, orphaned at the tender age of five, discovers her mother was imprisioned for murdering her father and determines to prove her innocence.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #87341 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-07
• Format: Special Edition
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

About the Author
Agatha Christie was born in Torquay in 1890 and became, quite simply, the best-selling novelist in history. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, written towards the end of the First World War, introduced us to Hercule Poirot, who was to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. She is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and another billion in over 100 foreign languages. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 19 plays, and six novels under the name of Mary Westmacott.

Customer Reviews

11 short stories without Poirot or Marple
Each story herein, except "The Second Gong", has also appeared in either THE HOUND OF DEATH or THE LISTERDALE MYSTERY. Some of the stories are fantasy fiction rather than mysteries, but don't be *too* quick to assign supernatural causes to anything.

"Accident" (1929) - Evans (formerly Inspector Evans of the CID) recognizes in the six-years-married Merrowdenes the notorious Mrs. Anthony, acquitted of poisoning her first husband - judged to have died of an accidental overdose of arsenic. As a girl, her stepfather accidentally fell to his death from a cliff during a walk. Not looking good for *Mr.* Merrowdene...

"The Fourth Man" (December 1925) As a supernatural story, best appreciated in Christie's fantasy-dominated collection _The Hound of Death_. Three ever-so-superior professional men - minister, physician, and lawyer - begin discussing a famous multiple personality case during a night train journey. Even though they're missing a fourth point of view - that of the man in the street - they ignore the fourth man in their compartment...

"The Mystery of the Blue Jar" (1933) Jack Hartington lives for golf; since he's 24 and has to earn a living, he lives near a golf course where he can practice every morning before work. Then screams no one else hears begin coming from a cottage near the course, every morning at the same time - and whatever's going on centers around the image of a woman holding a blue jar.

"The Mystery of the Spanish Shawl" a.k.a. "Mr. Eastwood's Adventure" (August 1924) Anthony Eastwood is stuck, trying to create a plot for the title "The Mystery of the Second Cucumber", when a mysterious phone call with 1 word - 'cucumber' - entangles him in a *real* mystery.

"Philomel Cottage" (November 1924) Businesslike Alix King expected to marry Dick Windyford, fellow clerk, when they could afford it - but he was too proud to propose when she got a windfall inheritance. Then Gerald Martin swept her off her feet in a whirlwind courtship - a perfect stranger. But like Bluebeard's wives, Alix gets curious about his past...

"The Red Signal" (June 1924) Sir Alington West, a distinguished alienist, has no time for ESP. His nephew Dermot has had a few 'red signals' in his life, but as his uncle points out, he'd seen signs of impending mortal peril and just hadn't consciously put them together. But why should he have it during a party - when the only danger is his hidden love for his best friend's wife?

"The Second Gong" - An early version of "Dead Man's Mirror", written first but published later. I recommend the expanded rewrite in the _Dead Man's Mirror_ collection.

"Sing a Song of Sixpence" (1934) Elderly Sir Edward Palliser, K.C., never expected to see Magdalen Vaughn again after a shipboard romance - let alone to be taken up on his offer to help if she ever needed it! Her family sponged off Great-aunt Lily Crabtree, who has been brutally murdered - and they're the chief suspects.

"S.O.S." (February 1926) The Dinsmead family - pompous father, worn-down mother, and 3 grown children - moved to a lonely country home rather abruptly upon Mr. Dinsmead's retirement from the building trade. They're all unhappy, except the father, who seems to have something up his sleeve. Then a stranger (parapsychologist Mortimer Cleveland), stranded for the night by a flat tire, finds a mysterious message written in the dust beside his bed...

"Where There's a Will" a.k.a. "Wireless" (1926) Mary Harter's physician, in the style of the old school, was far more blunt about the seriousness of her heart condition to her nephew than to her. Charles, making a parade of his superior knowledge of modern technology, wheedles her into getting not only an elevator, but a radio...which seems to justify all her misgivings about these electrical contraptions when it begins relaying messages from her late husband, saying that he's coming for her...

"The Witness for the Prosecution" (1933) Unlike the Billy Wilder film adaptation, here the viewpoint character and chief investigator is the prisoner's solicitor, Mayherne; the K.C. conducting the court case isn't even named. The information brought out during testimony in the film mostly appears during Vole's interview with Mayherne. The adaptation was faithful, except that here Vole's first meeting with Emily French is more dramatic, and her fluffy-headed eccentric image wasn't translated to film. The ending of the story, though, isn't as trite the movie's.