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Rating: 
Summary: A posthumous Christie with a vengeance
Review: After getting his car stuck in a ditch next to a desolate road hidden in thick mist, Michael Starkwedder walks to a cottage to get some help. To his surprise he notices that the front door of the cottage is ajar. Once inside the house he finds a woman with a gun in her hand, crouched next to a lifeless body. The woman, Laura Warwick, immediately admits to having killed her husband. Michael decides to help the woman to cover up her crime, but never expected to get involved so deeply into the intrigues of a guilt ridden family.
The Unexpected Guest is an original play by Christie and as such not based upon a novel or short story. The play opened at the Duchess Theatre, London, on August 12, 1958, and ran for 604 performances. It is considered to be one of the better Christie plays, but cannot be compared to her absolute masterpiece The Mousetrap. Charles Osborne, the nephew of Christie, did an excellent job in translating the play into a full novel. The original Christie touch is still present and by reading the book you can almost smell the theater curtains and hear the silent coughing of the audience. No question about this: Christie would have loved this adaptation.
Rating:
Summary: More Proof of Christie's Prevailing Witt
Review: Agatha Christie once more proves that things aren't always what they seem. When I was about halfway through the book, I was convinced that I knew the outcome and had, finally, after reading so many of Christie's mysteries, conquered her ingeniousness. But in the end, I realized that I was once again mistaken. Although I greatly appreciate the beautiful writing techniques that Christie uses, I sometimes prefer the writing of Charles Osborne. I find that he uses words that I am more familiar with and less outdated, and he does not prolong the beginning of the book. He seems to get more to the point, and this keeps me intrigued throughout the book. After reading Black Coffee, I knew that I must read The Unexpected Guest. The only fault that I found in this book was of my own opinion--I did not like the ending. I am a fan of Hercule Poirot's triumphant cases, but I disliked the very end (although I liked the twist to it). Moreover, this inadequacy proved too imparticular for me to rate this book less than five stars.
Rating: 
Summary: My faviort book
Review: I am a person who enjoys non-fiction and mystery novels. I think that this book was great. Agatha Christie did a wonderful job on this book. She made it all seem real. As I was reading the book it felt like I was watching it all happen in my head. I like the part when Michael helps Lauren plan a way to keep herself out of jail. She made Michael seem like he has done this type of thing before. The whole book was great. I just love to read books by Agatha Christie.
Rating:
Summary: An OK Book
Review: I am of the opinion that this book and Black Coffee were written to capitalize on the Christie name. Of course, a lot of things have been written that capitalize on the Christie name, but to capitalize on the Christie name and to not do it well is hard to tolerate. The Unexpected Guest and Black Coffee were both plays before they were novels, and they read like plays. Christie herself often altered novels to plays and plays to novels, but she had an instinctive understanding of both genres and was able to make the necessary alterations, cuts or expansions. So much so that the book Ten Little Indians and the play Ten Little Indians have different endings. This is also true of Witness for the Prosecution and a host of other novellas, stories, novels and their plays. The novels The Unexpected Guest and Black Coffee, however, are simply plays with the tags "he said" and "she said" thrown in. The descriptions sound like prop instructions. The flavor of Christie's prose--the nuances, tangents, discussions of character, the humor, the "twinkle" (for lack of a better word)--is missing. Charles Osborne meant well, I think, but the transformation of Christie's plays to novel form should either have been given to a writer of Christie's temperament and ability (as Sayers' Throne and Dominations was expertly finished by Jill Paton Walsh) or not attempted at all. The result is definitely sup-par. Recommendation: For fans, anything Christie appeals, but keep your expectations low.
Rating: 
Summary: Not up to the usual Christie standards.
Review: On the whole, I enjoyed this book, but throughout the whole thing I just felt that there should be something....more. I realize this book was an adaption of a play, but even without having known the ending, I figured it out long in advance. Although the plot wasn't as intricately woven as some, all in all it was an easy read that would be good on a rainy afternoon.
Rating:
Summary: Print the Play Instead
Review: Osborne adds nothing to our pleasure, and the way he expands tags of the stage directions is pretty irritating. I hope they paid him a lot of money to do these hack jobs on Christie's already perfect plays, because he sure killed whatever credibility he had as a poet, critic and essayist. HJe wrote a good book on Agatha Christie, but why go to him to turn the plays into novels? Surely a fiction writer would have been a better choice.
The Unexpected Guest wasn't even one of Christie's plays but when it is played properly on stage the character of Richard Warwick gets analyzed from many different perspectives until it becomes like Citizen Kane, a prism of a dead man's life. For better or worse (and usually for worse) he affected the lives of everyone around him--his wife, his mother, his retarded half-brother Jan, and others. I wonder what Christie originally intended to do with her tale's biggest loophole--what happened to Nurse Warburton, the corrupt nurse whom Richard Warwick bribed to give false testimony during the inquest into the death of the boy he ran over? I always imagine that, if the police dug deeper, they would find that "Warby" had been murdered also--shot to death, just like Richard. What do you fans think?
Rating: 
Summary: The Unexpected Guest
Review: This book is a good mystery overall. I could have hoped for a slightly different ending (but that's the romantic in me speaking). It's rather obvious that it was adapted from a play. The majority of the action occurs in one room and there isn't much depth of emotion described in any of the characters.
For Poirot and Marple fans, neither of these famous detectives are present. It is still a good mystery and a captivating read. However, I would recommend checking it out of the library or borrowing it from a friend before committing to a purchase.
Rating:
Summary: 2nd in trilogy of plays
Review: This is the 2nd and middle book of the 3 Osborne adaptations of Agatha Christie plays into novel form. I think it's the middling of the three in quality as well. The 1st was "Black Coffee" and the 3rd was "Spider's Web." All 3 read more like plays than novels--so if you are expecting the normal Christie novel, you may very well be disappointed. However, if you have read the novels, this is a lovely addition to your list of Christie's and a rare opportunity to envision her plays. True, the plays could just as easily have been bound and published. But, Osborne has apparently done little, if anything, to detract from the plays themselves. So, IMHO, he has done a service both to Christie and to the mystery reading public by publishing these works. As for the content, this particular work is great fun! I loved the story, the twists and turns (and there are many of them), the cleverness, etc. It IS after all, a Christie! And quite a good one at that. Enjoy!
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Summary: One of my All-Time Favorites
Review: This one's a classic Christie. My favorite Christie books are non-Poiroit's and non-Miss Marples' (like this one).
It all starts when a man has his car stuck in a ditch in the middle of the night. He stumbles into a house looking for help and knocks on the window. No one answers so he comes in (he finds the door open.) He goes downstairs until he sees a man in a wheelchair. When the old man doesn't respond, the protagonist (I forgot his name) assumes he is asleep, until he sees blood and turns around to find a woman with a revolver in her hand. She does not lie, instead she just admits what she has done. The main character does not call the cops, but decides he wants to help the charming young woman. Together, they make false evidence pointing towards a man whose son was once killed by the victim. We are soon introduced to many other characters, and that's when the detective and sergeant are introduced. I kept guessing until the end, when one of the characters, the mentaly disabled one shoots the cop, and so I thought that he was the killer and that was it. But I read on and there was a mind-shattering twist, and the ending is simply the best one out of the many, many Agatha Christie books I have read so far. YOU WON"T BELIEVE IT!!!
I strongly recommend this book to anyone-children or adults.
You'll love it.
Rating:
Summary: Agatha Christie: The Unexpected Delight
Review: When I first read a novel adaptation of an Agatha Christie play titled 'Black Coffee' I was in awe of the story and twitsed plot of it all. I knew that the follow up, 'The Unexpected Guest' was going to be a killer book. One of the best mysteries I have read! There is a reason why Agatha Christie has been repsonsible for the sales of over 2 billion books, they are just so damn good! I very much enjoyed this book, as you will too. The ending is the added bonus! You never knew, you just never knew!
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