Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie

Jacko Argyle got convicted for killing his own mother. Some time later, he died in prison. His family slowly recovers from the tragedies, thinking it was all over, until Dr Clagary shows up at the door saying, Jacko was innocent. This unravels a series of events that leave scars on every single person in the family.

In this standalone book, we meet a lot of characters, all different and kind of weird in their own way. The plot itself is quite interesting, I didn’t know until the very end who the murderer was, although I did have strong suspicions. We see a lot of character development and some of them getting out of their comfort zones for the first time in their lives. However, I did find Dr Calgary annoying, with his eagerness to solve the case. In the first part of the book, he seemed to be going round in circles which while I understand, I feel like wasn’t entirely necessary. Nevertheless, the second part of the book involved so many plot twists that I began to doubt my guesses and was still surprised at the end. I also enjoyed the back stories of the certain characters.

The idea itself and the plot progression were well executed - I did like the beginning that caused mayhem in the whole family. The constant suspense and everyone blaming one another made the whole plot more confusing - in a good way - and made me keep guessing who the murderer was. The back stories also brought in more depth into the characters and showed that everyone could be potentially responsible.

While the majority of the characters were likeable, I found Dr Calgary annoying at the beginning. I understood his motives and his actions, but I found the way he went about starting his investigation unnecessarily long and repetitive - I feel like the book would not lose anything, had some of the scenes been cut out. On the contrary, I think doing so would speed up the story and make it flow better.

The surprise element of the story wasn’t very… surprising. The execution of it was but I still had a good hunch about who the murderer was and the ending didn’t surprise me as much as it should, in my opinion. Having read some of Agatha Christie’s books before, this one was the least surprising. However, I still enjoyed the writing, the tone and style are vastly different to more contemporary books which was a nice change. It was a pleasure to glide through the story just for the sake of enjoying her style of writing. However, I wasn’t too gripped, I read and put it away as I didn’t get emotionally attached to any of the characters.

Rating: 3.5/5