The Unexpected Guest (novel)

infobox Book |
name = The Unexpected Guest
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition
author = Agatha Christie
cover_artist = Andrew Davidson
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series =
genre = Crime novel
publisher = Harper Collins
release_date = September 6 1999
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 188 pp (first edition, hardback)
isbn = ISBN 0-00-232690-6
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"The Unexpected Guest" is a novelisation by Charles Osborne of the 1958 play of the same name by crime fiction writer Agatha Christie and was first published in the UK by HarperCollins on September 6 1999 and on October 1, 1999 in the US by St Martin's Press.

The book was written following the successful publication of the novelisation of the 1930 play "Black Coffee" in the previous year. Like that book, the novelisation is a straightforward transfer of the stage lines and directions of Christie's script into a written narrative. Osborne chose not to add characters, lines or scenes which would alter in any substantial way what had been presented on the stage forty-one years earlier although minor amendments were made to produce suitable chapter endings.

The following year, "Spider's Web" underwent a similar novelisation process, again by Osborne.

Plot

On a foggy night, a man called Michael Starkwedder breaks down near an isolated house and, entering it, finds the body of a dead man slumped in a chair. A women stands over the corpse, gun in hand, and confesses to the murder but it is clear that she is covering up for someone else.