Crooked House

Published in 1949, Crooked House is Agatha Christie's first fully post-war mystery. Charles Hayward met Sophia Leonides during the war and decided to marry her. Once home, he invites her to dinner and when she appears, she tells him that she, and her entire family, are under surveillance because someone killed her grandfather. Aristide Leonides was a wealthy man, the founder of a food supply and restaurant empire, and his crooked, three-sectioned house, overflowed with suspects. The son who took over the business and his scientist wife, the other son (Sophia's father) who writes books no one reads and his actress wife, Sophia, her younger brother and sister, the children's schoolmaster, Aristide's much younger second wife, and his first wife's sister all had the opportunity to put ersinine in his insulin vial, and all have motives. It's classic Christie, with a twist ending that is shocking in 2019 and must have been scandalous in 1949.