Agatha Christie. Appointment with Death. London: Samuel French, 1972. Print.

Agatha Christie’s mysteries are known for their surprise endings. The Mousetrap, Ten Little Indians (a.k.a. And Then There Were None), or The Witness for the Prosecution can leave your head spinning—with fun, that is, like at the end of a wild carnival ride. The only time I was ever across the pond, I was in London. I had to see The Mousetrap. During the curtain call, the actors ask the audience not to give away the ending to others.

While Appointment with Death may not have the craziest ending, it will keep the audience guessing. The solution to the mystery is wickedly clever in own way, perhaps reminiscent of something by Patricia Highsmith. Of the different Christie mysteries I am familiar with, Appointment with Death is most like Murder on the Orient Express. The characters are stereotypically “veddy British.” Like Orient Express, the setting is exotic—Jerusalem and Jordan during the British Mandate. The famous character actress Wendy Hillier played a hilarious stuffy matron in the film version of Orient Express. It is easy to picture her playing Lady Westholme in this. Think Downton Abbey‘s Maggie Smith with more intentional exaggeration.

Like many of Christie’s plays, this is a closed room mystery. There are only about ten people who could have killed the frighteningly obnoxious Mrs. Boynton—another in a long line of literary evil stepmothers. There is little sympathy from anyone when she is discovered dead in the ruins of Petra.

Like actors from The Mousetrap, I am not going to divulge much more about the murder or murderer except to say that the murderer is nastily clever.

Two of the characters/suspects are Dr. Théodore Gérard, a world-famous French psychiatrist, and Dr. Sarah King, a beautiful young psychiatrist who is “only starting.” Some of the dialogue involves offhand psychologizing by these two experts which actually foreshadows the motivation of the murderer. Though lighter entertainment, there are echoes of psychological novels like Wuthering Heights or even Crime and Punishment. As the old radio (“wireless”) show would say: “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men?”