I was angry at Fareed, then upset then emphatic because he had a difficult choice to make which was going to impact the lives of all those around him. This journey of living in their world and experiencing every little triumph and huge failures forces us, the readers, to invest a huge chunk of our emotions. Raashida lets this story unfold over two years and she invites us, readers, on Azraa and Faheed's journey. While navigating that roadblock, the family is struck by tragedy of unimaginable proportions. In the normal course of their everyday life, a hug putd their life together and lives as individuals on a difficult and unknown trajectory.

One problem unique to this one is the set of laboured jokes at the expense of 1950s Hollywood - at least, the jokes WANT to be at the expense of 1950s Hollywood, but I think they come from 'My Big Book of 1000 One-Liners', or some such.This is a story of Azraa and Fareed, a Muslim couple who've been together for almost 19 years and have two daughters. Most Christie adaptations have a similar plodding quality (notable exceptions: Billy Wilder's 'Witness for the Prosecution', Sidney Gilliat's 'Endless Night', and people who have seen René Clair's 'And Then There Were None' think highly of that, too) - there's an AIR of excessive fidelity to the book, even when quite a few details have been changed. But there's something bookish and stifled about everything leading up to it. The puzzle itself is a real humdinger - one of Christie's very best, in my opinion - and the denouement is handled very well. What obligation does anyone else have to be authentic, if Agatha Christie herself wasn't? So far as I'm concerned the character is now fair game for any revisionist interpretation whatever and if so, give me Angela Lansbury's energy over Joan Hickson's 'authenticity' any day.Strange, then, that the film doesn't really work. Almost immediately, though (in 'The Tuesday Club Mysteries', published 1932), Miss Marple transformed into someone who WAS saintly, inspired and, worst of all, wise, and it's this latter, less agreeable Miss Marple that dominates the subsequent novels. She wasn't a saint, she wasn't an inspired guesser, and she wasn't wise. Miss Marple first appeared in 'Murder at the Vicarage' (published 1930), and I can't help thinking of the character in that book as the REAL Miss Marple: a transparent, almost pathologically nosy woman who thoroughly enjoyed prying for its own sake, who as capable of solving mysteries because she was unable to rest so long as there was potential gossip she didn't know about. Agatha Christie's Miss Marple isn't really Miss Marple, either. Not that purists have any right to complain. The character she began playing four years later was much the same as the one she plays here - and it's not Miss Marple. This is the film that launched Angela Lansbury's career as a television sleuth.

The Mirror Cracked by Nadie Lake