The Witness For The Prosecution

Imani Tyann Hall

4.28.2011

The Witness For The Prosecution is a mystery that novelist Agatha Christie wrote. In this book, there are 11 stories that are about cases. In most of these cases, there are abrupt or confusing endings which may disappoint readers because there are times when the short story could be written as a whole book instead. An example of this is the first story of The Witness for the Prosecution. The story is about a man named Leonard Vole who is accused of having murdered someone. The story begins by telling the reader how Leonard met the victim and how he had once helped her out. There is no certain decision to this case until the last sentence of the story which says "My dear Mr. Mayherne," said Romaine, "you do not see at all. I knew -- he was guilty!"

My favorite story in this collection is "The Mystery of the Spanish Shawl" because the story is about a writer gathering ideas for his book. The story begins with the main character Anthony Eastwood thinking of ideas for his book. He is then suddenly met with a scary situation because he is accused of being a murderer. Eastwood then takes advantage and uses all of the information he can get about the murder from the detectives to use in his book. I found this interesting because I was able to relate to the actions that Eastwood took. An idea for writing can come from anything, especially from a murder case.
I would recommend this book to people who want to read a quick Mystery story because the stories in this book give the reader interesting ideas. Although some of the stories may be difficult to follow, any reader would be able to get used to Agatha Christie's style of solving the mystery at the very last page of the book