Crooked House by Agatha Christie is supposedly one of her personal favorites.  It is a stand-alone mystery–not a Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot mystery.  It has all the trademark Christie elements: location, murder, large cast of suspicious and unique characters, red herrings, and the detective to unravel it all.  As usual, absolutely solid mystery writing by Christie with a surprise solution at the conclusion–which seems oh so obvious when the solution is being outlined in the final chapter.  A short novel at only a little over 200 pages, the pages will fly by and it can easily be read in an evening.

Content Analysis:

Profanity/Language:  6 religious exclamations; 5 mild obscenities; 2 anatomical terms.

Violence/Gore:  Character reads of a death in the newspaper; report that a character was poisoned and this is referred to multiple times during the book; report that someone stabbed/killed two people in his youth; list of death of family members due to accidents, illness, etc.; character shouts he wants to kill someone by wringing their neck; general discussions about murders, motivations, types, etc.; 12-year old knocked unconscious; report of death by poisoning; report of deaths by gunshot (adult and child); written diary detailing how crimes were committed.

Sex/Nudity:  Report/implication of out of wedlock pregnancy which turned out to be a false alarm; a married woman and unmarried man are thought to be romantically involved and this is referred to several times and a line of questioning in the investigation.

Mature Subject Matter:

Murder, suicide.

Alcohol / Drug Use:

Characters smoke cigarettes and cigars; adults drink.