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Masterpieces of Murder: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd / And Then There Were None / Witness for the Prosecution / Death on the Nile
Masterpieces of Murder The Murder of Roger Ackroyd / And Then There Were None / Witness for the Prosecution / Death on the Nile Author:Agatha Christie The four murder classics contained in this volume were largely responsible for establishing Agatha Christie's reputation as a mystery writer without peer -- the reigning "Queen of Crime" for half a century. — THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD (1926), often called the most brilliant tour de force in all mystery fiction, is... more » Dame Agatha's most famous -- and controversial -- novel. The murder of a doctor in a small English village brings Hercule Poirot to the scene, and although all the clues are there to be found by both the great detective and the astute reader, the identity of the killer comes as a stunning surprise to all but the most discerning of mystery buffs.
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (1939), also known as Ten Little Indians, was a great success as a play, was filmed three times, and was made into a television movie. Christie's most famous "locked room" puzzle, the novel focuses on ten people -- strangers to one another and each nurturing a guilty secret -- who are brought together on an isolated island and murdered one by one, to the tune of a nursery rhyme. (Readers will be surprised to find that the novel has an even more astonishing ending than the filmed versions.)
WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (1948) was also the basis for a hit play and a film. The novella presents a "loving" wife who, for the strangest of motives, chooses to testify against her husband in a murder trial. The "double-twist" ending, breathtaking in its ingenuity, has thrilled a generation of audiences.
DEATH ON THE NILE (1937), inspired by her travels in Egypt with her archaeologist husband, was one of Dame Agatha's own favorites -- a book in which she felt her psychological insight was at its most acute. Certainly Hercule Poirot has never surpassed his performance in his suspenseful novel, in which he undertakes to solve the seemingly motiveless murder of a beautiful, newly married young woman in the exotic land of the Pharoahs.« less