Metzger is a Ph.D. with an extensive background teaching drama. In this essay she assesses critical response to Christie'splay and praises the writer's dramatic skills.

J. C. Trewin remarked in Agatha Christie; First Lady of Crime that it often astonishes critics and theatre reviewers that after so many years on the London stage The Mousetrap "can still be acted before audiences with no idea of its development or climax." Not only critics but audiences have kept the secret of the whodonit and they have done so, Trewin argued, in tribute to Christie's work. Part of the appeal is in the reliability of the puzzle. Christie fans know they can rely on a solution that is plausible and yet one that completely escapes them until the play's conclusion. The least likely suspect is too often the murderer, or is he? It is the solving of that equation...