Outside, the snowstorm has been raging for hours and the roads are now impassable. Monkwell Manor, a small bed and breakfast hotel lost in the depths of the English countryside, is cut off from the rest of the world, almost buried under a blanket of deep and silent snow. The few guests at Monkwell Manor are trapped like mice in a mousetrap. No one is going to leave the hotel for quite some time by the look of the storm outside. As the snow piles up, tensions mount between the guests. They are an odd bunch of people and the situation they find themselves in brings bad tempers and secrets to the surface. An announcement on the radio that a murderer is on the loose in the neighbourhood spreads more fear and nervousness. The storm rages on and another person arrives at the hotel looking for safety. He is a police inspector searching for the killer. But no sooner has he arrived than one of the hotel guests is murdered right under his nose. Then the dreadful truth dawns on the people trapped in the isolated hotel. The murderer is one of them. Who will be the next person to die? Agatha Christie's famous murder mystery The Mousetrap is the longest-running stage play in the world. It opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London in 1952, moved to the larger Saint Martin's Theatre in 1974 and has played to packed houses ever since. More than five million people have seen the show in London and, at the end of each performance, audiences are asked never to tell anyone the identity of the murderer. Eight times a week, audiences sit in the theatre trying to work it out as clues come thick and fast. But Christie was a very clever writer and she leads people up the garden path before revealing the truth at the end of the play. Just as you think you have solved the puzzle for yourself, Christie throws in another major clue and all your theories go straight out of the window and you have to begin again. The Mousetrap is a great chill-and-shudder stage puzzle and it has become as important a landmark for tourists in London as Buckingham Palace or Tower Bridge. No trip to London is complete without a visit to Saint Martin's Theatre to try and solve the mystery of the world's longest-running play.
