Unexpected Guest

A novel written inspired by Agatha Christie’s detective play that became wildly popular on theater stages around the world. When adapted, the play hasn’t lost any of its sharpness, dynamism, or mystery; the unexpected twists of the plot on paper look just as natural as they did on stage.

“Not long before midnight on a raw November evening, thick, sticky fog shrouded in gray gloom stretches of the already dark, tree-lined country road in South Wales, near the Bristol Channel coastline, where the misty-horn signals echoed with a dull, mechanical, even regularity. Now and then came distant dog barking and the mournful cry of a night bird. The few houses that could be seen along the road—whose width was little more than that of an ordinary street—stood roughly half a mile apart. On one of its darkest stretches, the road made a bend, winding around an extensive garden behind which rose a handsome three-story mansion; and it was exactly at that spot that the car got stuck, its front wheels dropping into a roadside ditch. After two or three attempts to get out, the driver must have decided that struggling was pointless, and the engine fell silent.”