This was one of the books which I bagged at the most recent library book sale and it wasn’t until I got home that I realised that it is an adaptation of a Christie play. So I was a bit wary and didn’t really know what to expect, but it turned out to be a really entertaining if super-fast read.

It’s set near the south Wales coast and begins with a motorist getting stuck in a ditch in a thick fog, he sets off to find help and reaches a large 18th century house. There is no answer to his knocks on the french windows but when he tries the handle he ends up falling into the dark room where there is a dead body sitting in a wheelchair! The motorist quickly realises that he isn’t the only living person in that room and from that point the book takes lots of different twists and turns.

It’s my favourite sort of crime book as it gets straight to the point with a bang, no footering about. It’s absolutely years since I read anything by Agatha Christie so I’m not really able to judge whether Charles Osborne’s writing style is very similar to hers but anyway it certainly works as a crime, mystery book.

The Unexpected Guest was first performed in London’s West End in August 1958 and it ran for 18 months, which was something of a relief to Christie as her previous play Verdict had closed after just one month, in fact it was booed off the stage! That must have been quite a shock for poor Agatha because in the April of that year The Mousetrap had reached its 2,239th performance at The Ambassadors Theatre which broke the record for the longest London run of a play.

Charles Osborne has adapted more Christie plays and I’ll be on the look out for them.