This particular story takes place in rural Scotland. Michael Starkwedder runs his car into the ditch in a particularly bad storm, leaving him afoot. He comes to a house, finds the French doors open, goes into a study and discovers the dead body of the master of the house sitting in a chair. Alas, there also seems to be a murderer!

Richard Warwick’s wife Laura confesses the murder to Michael. He decides to help her and plants evidence implicating an intruder. When the police constable arrives, the story has shifted to the murderer being the father of a child who Warwick killed in an auto accident years ago. From there the plot escalates.

Everyone has reason to want to kill Richard Warwick. He was a big-game hunter who was paralyzed in an accident. He did not take the sedentary life well and made it miserable for everyone else. Living at the estate is his mother, his wife, his "retarded" brother, the housekeeper and the nurse-valet. Each one has reasons to want him dead. When the local constable comes to solve the crime, each is suspected in turn.

The clues are impeccably placed, in true Christie form, to implicate each one and then, finally, the true murderer. This is an adaptation from the play of the same name written by Christie in 1958. It reads like a play, yet is every bit as gripping as any of Christie's works. Charles Osborne has done another creditable job, just as in Black Coffee, another play-turned-novel. This is a very good, quick read.

--Kay Black