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Murder at the Manor: Crooked House / Ordeal by Innocence / The Seven Dials Mystery
This volume contains the stories of: Crooked House, Ordeal by Innocence and The Seven Dials Mystery together in one volume dating back from 1929 to 1959.
513 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1989
14 people are currently reading
719 people want to read
About the author
Agatha Christie
5,807 books75.2k followersAgatha Christie also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, and was occasionally published under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan.
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
This best-selling author of all time wrote 66 crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and six novels under a pseudonym in romance. Her books sold more than a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation. According to Index Translationum, people translated her works into 103 languages at least, the most for an individual author. Of the most enduring figures in crime literature, she created Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. She atuhored The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of modern theater.
Associated Names:
Agata Christie
Agata Kristi
Агата Кристи (Russian)
Агата Крісті (Ukrainian)
Αγκάθα Κρίστι (Greek)
アガサ クリスティ (Japanese)
阿嘉莎·克莉絲蒂 (Chinese)
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
This best-selling author of all time wrote 66 crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and six novels under a pseudonym in romance. Her books sold more than a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation. According to Index Translationum, people translated her works into 103 languages at least, the most for an individual author. Of the most enduring figures in crime literature, she created Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. She atuhored The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of modern theater.
Associated Names:
Agata Christie
Agata Kristi
Агата Кристи (Russian)
Агата Крісті (Ukrainian)
Αγκάθα Κρίστι (Greek)
アガサ クリスティ (Japanese)
阿嘉莎·克莉絲蒂 (Chinese)
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
January 21, 2013
Three Agatha Christies collected in one thick tome that span almost thirty years. Per the jacket, Christie herself said, "Of my detective books, I think the two that satisfy me best are Crooked House and Ordeal by Innocence."
I reviewed them separately to avoid a novella length review.
"The Seven Dials Mystery." (1929) Review at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
"Ordeal By Innocence." (1958) Review at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
"Crooked House." (1949) Review at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
I reviewed them separately to avoid a novella length review.
"The Seven Dials Mystery." (1929) Review at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
"Ordeal By Innocence." (1958) Review at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
"Crooked House." (1949) Review at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
April 13, 2022
Because of my age and generation, I saw the movie "Clue" before I even knew what a "whodunit" was. It wasn't until I was older that I picked up an Agatha Christie book, and I have yet to be let down. All three of these stories are a tour-de-force of the whodunit genre, and they're written with such awesome dialogue and laden with so many clue-details that even flagged pages to refer back to see if my hunches were correct. The last story in this volume (Crooked House) in particular had me baffled up until the end, and I truly did not know who the murderer was. But, like the movie Clue, it could have gone more than one direction... with a simple adjustment in clue presentation. This book is an example of entertaining murder mystery reading at its finest.
Ironically, I had bought this book used at Illiad Books in North Hollywood several years ago and had only recently (finally) gotten around to reading it. It is hard to convey to folks who don't read how such entertainment is available for $3.50, and it will sit on a shelf until you're ready for it.
Ironically, I had bought this book used at Illiad Books in North Hollywood several years ago and had only recently (finally) gotten around to reading it. It is hard to convey to folks who don't read how such entertainment is available for $3.50, and it will sit on a shelf until you're ready for it.
July 22, 2015
This isn't quite the book I read----mine wasn't large print and contained 3 Agatha Christie books but this is the only one goodreads shows. At any rate, it's been a very long time since I read a Christie and I thoroughly enjoyed these 3. All 3 deal with a limited possibility of suspects yet I never suspected the right guy in the first one, and knew fairly late in the stories the 2nd and 3rd ones.
September 26, 2013
Some of the best twists in these two stories!
March 1, 2024
Review title: Unique Christie collection
Agatha Christie novels are well-suited to publication in omnibus editions which include multiple novels in one volume. They are longer than short stories but not too long to combine, and often have a common thread (Hercule Poirot mysteries, Miss Marple mysteries). One drawback of the omnibus approach is overlap of content. I had previously read the middle of the three books, Crooked House, in this omnibus edition in a different Agatha Christie omnibus called The Nursery Rhyme Murders: 3 Complete Mystery Novels based on the unifying theme of the title, so I will just refer you to my previous review with the comment that I felt it was the strongest of the three in that book.
The unifying theme of the three novels here, paradoxically, is their uniqueness. None of the three is solved by a thoughtful detective, Crooked House is a rare Christie written from first-person perspective, Seven Dials involves a bumbling group of amateur sleuths working with a smart Scotland Yard superintendent, and Ordeal by Innocence is perhaps the rarest of all.
While it functions as a decent murder mystery in its own right, Seven Dials is also a solid clever send-up of the British murder-mystery genre that tweaks and plays with its conventions. There is the land-rich but broke Lord and Lady who have to rent out their historic castle to the nouveau riche industrialist, there are the vacant fun-loving children of the nobility too bored with life to be bothered to wake up before noon, there are the inattentive foreign service clerks who can't identify a national security threat, and of course there are the downstairs staff who run their world that the rich old and new are just living in. The kids--public-school friends 10 years after graduation struggling to establish grown-up jobs and lives--team up to thwart what they think is a dangerous top-secret society that has committed two murders amongst their social peers. The murders are real, the danger is real, but they are way off in their approach and assumptions.
But Ordeal by Innocence is certainly the story that captured my attention the most of this collection. In a small English town, the Ayres family set up a foster home during World War II for children orphaned or separated from parents by the Blitz and other casualties of the war. After the war, unable to have children of their own, Leo and Rachel Ayres adopt five of the children to give them a home they would otherwise not have had. That home is fractured when Rachel is murdered, son Jacko is arrested and convicted for the murder, then dies of pneumonia after only six months in prison. But it is truly shattered after Jacko's death when his alibi, a man who Jacko said had picked him up while hitchhiking away from the murder scene, recovered from a coma that prevented him from testifying at the trial. The driver confirmed the alibi and his story aligned with the evidence and times established during the trial so the verdict was overturned. When Arthur Calgary, the driver, met with the family to tell his story and announce the overturned verdict, he was surprised by the family's response: "I thought that I was ending something. . . . But I was made to feel, I was made to see, that instead of ending something I was starting something.” (p. 363)
This setup takes only the first 15 pages of the novel. The chain of events that it triggered play out over the remaining 160 pages in perplexing, often tense, action and conversation. It is unpredictable and riveting, more modern and nuanced than we expect from typical Christie plots, leaning closer to psychological thriller than murder mystery.
Agatha Christie novels are well-suited to publication in omnibus editions which include multiple novels in one volume. They are longer than short stories but not too long to combine, and often have a common thread (Hercule Poirot mysteries, Miss Marple mysteries). One drawback of the omnibus approach is overlap of content. I had previously read the middle of the three books, Crooked House, in this omnibus edition in a different Agatha Christie omnibus called The Nursery Rhyme Murders: 3 Complete Mystery Novels based on the unifying theme of the title, so I will just refer you to my previous review with the comment that I felt it was the strongest of the three in that book.
The unifying theme of the three novels here, paradoxically, is their uniqueness. None of the three is solved by a thoughtful detective, Crooked House is a rare Christie written from first-person perspective, Seven Dials involves a bumbling group of amateur sleuths working with a smart Scotland Yard superintendent, and Ordeal by Innocence is perhaps the rarest of all.
While it functions as a decent murder mystery in its own right, Seven Dials is also a solid clever send-up of the British murder-mystery genre that tweaks and plays with its conventions. There is the land-rich but broke Lord and Lady who have to rent out their historic castle to the nouveau riche industrialist, there are the vacant fun-loving children of the nobility too bored with life to be bothered to wake up before noon, there are the inattentive foreign service clerks who can't identify a national security threat, and of course there are the downstairs staff who run their world that the rich old and new are just living in. The kids--public-school friends 10 years after graduation struggling to establish grown-up jobs and lives--team up to thwart what they think is a dangerous top-secret society that has committed two murders amongst their social peers. The murders are real, the danger is real, but they are way off in their approach and assumptions.
But Ordeal by Innocence is certainly the story that captured my attention the most of this collection. In a small English town, the Ayres family set up a foster home during World War II for children orphaned or separated from parents by the Blitz and other casualties of the war. After the war, unable to have children of their own, Leo and Rachel Ayres adopt five of the children to give them a home they would otherwise not have had. That home is fractured when Rachel is murdered, son Jacko is arrested and convicted for the murder, then dies of pneumonia after only six months in prison. But it is truly shattered after Jacko's death when his alibi, a man who Jacko said had picked him up while hitchhiking away from the murder scene, recovered from a coma that prevented him from testifying at the trial. The driver confirmed the alibi and his story aligned with the evidence and times established during the trial so the verdict was overturned. When Arthur Calgary, the driver, met with the family to tell his story and announce the overturned verdict, he was surprised by the family's response: "I thought that I was ending something. . . . But I was made to feel, I was made to see, that instead of ending something I was starting something.” (p. 363)
This setup takes only the first 15 pages of the novel. The chain of events that it triggered play out over the remaining 160 pages in perplexing, often tense, action and conversation. It is unpredictable and riveting, more modern and nuanced than we expect from typical Christie plots, leaning closer to psychological thriller than murder mystery.
December 21, 2019
Three wickedly wonderful tales by Christie. Each very different and this time not one of her well-known amateur sleuths is involved.
In one, a scientist returns from exploration to discover he was a murder suspect's alibi — and feels bound to help the man's family from an "ordeal by innocence."
A young couple have fallen in love but before they can marry, there is a murder in her family and the whole family comes under suspicion. There is something about this family, and their interconnected lives as they return to the "crooked house." And the young man, the son of the assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard, is out to solve the crime.
Then there's the murder at Chimneys. During a party, a young man —notorious for oversleeping — has died, on the very night when other party goers place eight alarm clocks in his bedroom as a prank to get him to wake early. But when he is found, there are only seven clocks! What can all those clocks with their "seven dials" mean? And who will solve the mystery?
In one, a scientist returns from exploration to discover he was a murder suspect's alibi — and feels bound to help the man's family from an "ordeal by innocence."
A young couple have fallen in love but before they can marry, there is a murder in her family and the whole family comes under suspicion. There is something about this family, and their interconnected lives as they return to the "crooked house." And the young man, the son of the assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard, is out to solve the crime.
Then there's the murder at Chimneys. During a party, a young man —notorious for oversleeping — has died, on the very night when other party goers place eight alarm clocks in his bedroom as a prank to get him to wake early. But when he is found, there are only seven clocks! What can all those clocks with their "seven dials" mean? And who will solve the mystery?
October 23, 2023
It took me forever to finish this book because I was so distracted with life things. There are three different stories in this one book. My favorite was Crooked House. I really enjoyed this who-done-it and did not suspect the actual culprit. My next favorite was Seven Dials Mystery. It took me a minute for this one to really rope me in, but I did enjoy it. Ordeal By Innocence was my least favorite of these stories but it was still good. It seemed to be a bit redundant and at times my attention waned. It probably didn’t help that I could only find time to read a few pages a day so I didn’t get fully engrossed in it till about the last 20 pages or so.
I need to go back and read this book again down the road when I am not so distracted and once I’ve had time to forget who committed the crimes.
I need to go back and read this book again down the road when I am not so distracted and once I’ve had time to forget who committed the crimes.
March 27, 2025
What I Did Like:
+Both of these books do a decent job of setting an amateur sleuth in the midst of a crime that seems unsolvable and letting them work their way through. It’s a fun way to get the mystery, since you’re on par with the observation skills of the main character.
+The dialogue is well done. There’s a sense of who is talking, even in a group, without always having to use dialogue tags. It’s a natural conversation with the proper flow.
+The endings provide a full solution with satisfying efficiency. As is common for this author and the genre she made famous, these both provide the reader with every answer.
Who Should Read This One:
-Old school mystery fans who don’t mind some things that aged poorly for society. The mystery is solid.
My Rating: 3 Stars
For Full Review: https://alltherightreads.com/2025/03/...
+Both of these books do a decent job of setting an amateur sleuth in the midst of a crime that seems unsolvable and letting them work their way through. It’s a fun way to get the mystery, since you’re on par with the observation skills of the main character.
+The dialogue is well done. There’s a sense of who is talking, even in a group, without always having to use dialogue tags. It’s a natural conversation with the proper flow.
+The endings provide a full solution with satisfying efficiency. As is common for this author and the genre she made famous, these both provide the reader with every answer.
Who Should Read This One:
-Old school mystery fans who don’t mind some things that aged poorly for society. The mystery is solid.
My Rating: 3 Stars
For Full Review: https://alltherightreads.com/2025/03/...
January 10, 2021
Chosen for the Popsugar 2021 challenge, prompt "A book with something broken on the cover"
Would also work for the #ReadChristie2021 challenge, "A story set after WWII" or "A story set in a grand house" (because, what a grand house it was, am I right?) and possibly "A story featuring a school"
Crooked House isn't one of my favorites, but the methodology is still top notch. There are so many characters, it's easy to get lost, and I did break down and sketch out a little family tree. The ending was certainly a surprise as well.
Narration was great, but with Hugh Fraser, I kept expecting the MC to be Lt Hastings and for Poirot to pop up and re-cap the whole thing! :)
Would also work for the #ReadChristie2021 challenge, "A story set after WWII" or "A story set in a grand house" (because, what a grand house it was, am I right?) and possibly "A story featuring a school"
Crooked House isn't one of my favorites, but the methodology is still top notch. There are so many characters, it's easy to get lost, and I did break down and sketch out a little family tree. The ending was certainly a surprise as well.
Narration was great, but with Hugh Fraser, I kept expecting the MC to be Lt Hastings and for Poirot to pop up and re-cap the whole thing! :)
December 21, 2022
This is a compilation of three stories, which I reviewed individually:
The Seven Dials Mystery (1 star)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Crooked House (4 stars)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Ordeal by Innocence (3 stars)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I did not care for the first story, while the other two are well written ones. My rating is kind of an average of the three.
The Seven Dials Mystery (1 star)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Crooked House (4 stars)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Ordeal by Innocence (3 stars)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I did not care for the first story, while the other two are well written ones. My rating is kind of an average of the three.
March 24, 2023
Agatha Christie is life. She has such a talent for writing the best books ever. I'd always loved Enid Blyton as a kid, and moving onto Agatha Christie feels like maturing (I know this doesn't make sense) but anyway, I really loved this book! I think listening to the audiobook (yes it does count you freaks) made it so much more real because of the different voices and hearing it in real time. I always love when a book can properly bring everything together, and this book did!!
December 18, 2021
When people start dieing in the large home an inspector is called in to find the killer. There are lots of relatives to blame, but who is the culprit?
March 20, 2022
Does not disappoint.. good airplane reading
February 28, 2023
Enjoyed it
March 4, 2016
The Seven Dials Mystery: 8/10 Stars. I loved the secret society aspect and all the twists and never knowing who did it. I was genuinely surprised by the ending.
Crooked House: 7/10 Stars. A good ending, I didn't at all guess who the killer was, but it droned on a little.
Ordeal by Innocence: 7.5/10 Stars. The first Christie novel that I figured out who the killer was. Interesting story, definitely keeps you guessing as to who did it.
Crooked House: 7/10 Stars. A good ending, I didn't at all guess who the killer was, but it droned on a little.
Ordeal by Innocence: 7.5/10 Stars. The first Christie novel that I figured out who the killer was. Interesting story, definitely keeps you guessing as to who did it.
August 10, 2007
I have never read Agatha Christie before. Picked this one up at a used book store, and can see why she's a likeable read. Will give her more chances to impress whenever I'm looking for something light. Also, love Miss Marple pbs series- another reason I thought I'd pick up one of her books. Fun dialogue, good twists, solveable crimes...all together worthwhile.
May 18, 2013
Two out of three ain't bad. Three Christie books in one isn't a bad deal. I will review these novels separately, but quickly, Crooked House is decent, very well liked by most, but not a personal favorite; Ordeal by Innocence is very solid, but Seven Dials is on my list of "least favorite Christie stories".
July 5, 2015
Another fantastic who-done-it by the master herself. Agatha Christie delivers all the elements of the classic mystery that made her books great. A must read for any Christie fan. In the foreward she admits this was one of her personal favorites. I can see why!
March 3, 2014
I just love Agatha Christie!
October 6, 2015
Finished The Seven Dials Mystery. Lots of suspense and red herrings, and I was fooled! Very good reading!
March 19, 2016
great anthology for any Christie fan!
December 24, 2017
One of the better Agatha Christie novels I've read. Didn't see the ending coming.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews