It’s Britain in the familiar interwar period of Agatha Christie, and Miranda Green (Mischa Barton), an Agatha Christie fan herself, is an aspiring detective much given to the familiar (and irritating) Sherlock Holmes routine; your bag was clearly purchased second-hand, New York is a five-hour trip from Atlanta, there were 46 books on the shat shelf a moment ago, and so on. Anyway, she finds herself invited to the private island estate of a wealthy, mysterious businessman and is hardly likely to refuse, especially when, in the classic And Then There Were None setup, a number of strangers with no apparent connections are gathered there too.
Things start to get odd – or odder still than the scenario’s inherent oddness – when, by chance during a game of “Two truths and a lie”, it comes out that none of those present had a father growing up; after that, we’re obviously due the first murder, and Invitation to a Murder doesn’t let us down on that front. A few more murders and a solution both far-fetched and strangely satisfying later, the credits roll on this pleasant piece of Christie-ana.
This type of pastiche has had some currency of late, with Daniel Craig soon to complete his Benoit Blanc trilogy – and, hopefully, with three or four more to come after that – See How They Run, and even Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot films feeling more like pastiches than straight adaptations. Invitation to a Murder assembles all the proper ingredients – a National Trust home, a group of strangers including a dissolute Yank, and of course murder – and has fun doing it. There are niggles, such as an overly plummy accent on Barton, a suspiciously modern look to some of the fabrics, and the odd anachronism such as the claim that patrician Findlay is a billion-, rather than a million-aire – but overall Murder succeeds both in scratching the itch it set out to and, against the odds, providing a solution to the mystery that is both satisfactory and that you haven’t seen before.
★★★☆☆
