This book has four long plays very well written. Two things which I loved about this book was the theme chosen for the plays and secondly the character names chosen in the plays. Agatha Christie has done a great job in choosing the character names; it’s all very coherent to the scenes. . It pretty much makes the reader imagine the ambience while reading the book, that’s how enthralling the writing is. One more noticeable factor being the detail level of each scene, any person who wants to put up a play can just blindly read this book and put up a great show.
Out of the four plays couple of them are just outstanding namely “And there were none” and “Appointment with death”. In the former play ten strangers are invited to an island to lodge. They all arrive there and are in for a surprise of their life time. Their host who invited them is nowhere to be seen, but a strong message is delivered. The message being that they will all be killed for their misdemeanors. The author goes on to describe each characters profile in depth at this point of moment and also the way they start guessing who their unknown host could be. Just before they are done with the discussion one of them is killed and they start jumping to conclusions. The book keeps you stuck to your desk because this is the place where the story gets real interesting and it’s at full pace. Within no time more people die and everyone’s death plot is so very well planned that it confuses the others badly. The suspense is so very well maintained and the plots are so immaculate, it keeps making the readers guess as to whom the culprit is but till the end the guess is wrong. The author has thought out of the box, kudos you have pulled out a great play.
The second one is again a murder mystery but this one has a completely different set of characters in a totally different situation proving the authors ability of creativity. The overall delivery of this play is just mind-blowing just for the fact that this would have happened in many peoples lives. The story is about an old rich lady who is counting her days due to a heart disease. She happens to be uneducated and hence in fear that her sons will one day leave her, has made their lives miserable by not educating them too. She curtailed every single freedom of theirs. Whenever they asked her about why they were not educated, she used to say we have all the money on earth and that we need not work at all. However her daughters in laws were a rebel and wanted their husbands to work too, much to the dislike of their mother in law. The kids too wanted to go out and lead a normal life like everyone. The old lady dies all of a sudden one day and the police inquire everyone who was present along with her. There is enough evidence for everyone to be thought of as a murderer; for once I was wondering who killed the poor lady. The author’s narration was with such eloquence that no one could have guessed the ending; it just kept me glued to the book. The old lady in fact had committed suicide and just wanted to prove everyone that she was still in control of the lives of her kids even after death. It will become pretty evident that the first person who goes out of the family and joins work would have been the murderer, and hence each one will stay back and at the end of the day things would not change. However finally they find out that this was a setup and that she committed suicide.
The real reason why I liked this story was that we would have encountered such characters in our life at some point or the other. Domination, despotism is something no one can stand, but the ugly fact about it being every one has a taste of it at some point of time. The best stories or the movies are the ones where you can relate your life to it, that’s what this play is all about. Agatha Christie, hats off for choosing such an intricate and controversial subject but yet one of the best ones.
The third play is “The hollow”, this one is also a decent play but not living up to the reader’s expectations who have read the first two. The fourth one is “The mouse trap”, unfortunately this is one of the most boring plays in the book. I don’t know why she named the book after this play, wrong choice made madam. An absolute waste of time to read this last play, there is good enough plot but the story looks very straight forward with not much thrill maintained.
Overall a great book with the queens English, definitely worth reading any day. It can be one of the best gifts you can give your friend, a book that can go on to your library collection for sure. Special thanks to Nithya, my friend who lent me this book.
Balaji
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