In 1958 Agatha Christie published her 50th crime novel, Ordeal by Innocence. The 68-year-old Christie had been writing detective stories for nearly 40 years and it was generally thought that her best days were behind her. But the book she had submitted under the title The Innocent was regarded by her publishers as her best in years, and she claimed later on that it was her own joint favourite, along with Crooked House.
The book’s power is due, I think, to the vividness of her portrayal of the Argyle family and the ill-assorted, incestuous household at their grand but horribly misnamed home, Sunny Point. The Argyles are like a buttoned-up, English version of a family in a Tennessee Williams play....