Black Coffee

Black Coffee' certainly feels like a novel based on a play - most of the action takes place in one room, and many of the descriptive passages between dialogue read like stage directions. The characterisations are spot-on - in particular, Poirot is his usual conceited self! In fact, the story reads just like an original Agatha Christie novel. The only criticism I can come up with for the book is that it does not have the traditional `reveal' in which all the suspects are gathered together and eliminated one by one - but this hardly matters. All in all, I would say that it is a very good read. It is also worth noting that the adapter, Charles Osbourne, is eminently qualified to produce this novelisation, since he has written about Agatha Christie, and also appeared on the stage in `Black Coffee' in the 1950s.