1 The Mousetrap, Palace Theatre, Westcliff, Monday, June 3, to Saturday, June 8.

Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap has kept people guessing for so long, becoming the longest running show of any kind in the history of theatre.

The scene is set when a group of people gathered in a country house cut off by the snow discover, to their horror, that there is a murderer in their midst. Who can it be?

One by one the suspicious characters reveal their sordid pasts until at the last, nerve-shredding moment the identity and the motive are finally revealed.

Starring Gwyneth Strong (Only Fools and Horses, EastEnders), the play has been described as the ‘cleverest murder mystery of British Theatre’.

Tickets from £29-£38.

southendtheatres.org.uk

3 Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Four, May 22-23, Mercury Theatre, Colchester.

Crammed full of adventure, romance, comedy and of course brilliant deductions. The Sign of Four is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s epic second Sherlock Holmes tale, a breathtaking yarn brought to life in a spectacular new stage adaptation from Blackeyed Theatre.

When Mary Morstan requests help with the mystery of her missing father, Holmes and Watson enter a world of deception and trickery, unravelling a plot involving murder, corruption and stolen jewels.

Tickets £14-£21.50

www.mercurytheatre.co.uk

3 Where is Mrs Christie? Chelmsford Theatre, Thursday 18 April.

Agatha Christie was one of the greatest thriller writers of all time and certainly the most prolific.

In 1926, she was at the centre of a mystery as perplexing as any of her fiction, a series of events which sparked one of the biggest and most extensive police hunts in history.

Her crashed car was discovered in Surrey and the famous author was missing, presumed dead by many, for eleven days. However, she was eventually found at a luxury hotel in Harrogate.

She claimed then, and for the rest of the life, that she was suffering from amnesia and remembered nothing. Neither the press nor the police believed her.

Actor Liz Grand presents her new one-woman show ‘Where Is Mrs Christie?’ Did Agatha Christie lie, and if so why? Did she suffer from amnesia? Was it a publicity stunt? Or was there a darker secret involved in this disappearance which was to affect her for the rest of her life?

Tickets £14.

chelmsford.gov.uk

4 The Perfect Murder, presented by the East Essex Players, Dixon Studio, Palace Theatre,Wednesday, July 3, to Saturday, July 6.

Carla Moorland has been murdered and John Hoskins, who has been having an affair with her, knows who did it-himself.

John’s wife Elizabeth, rather than call the police, is determined to keep John out of prison, even if it means an innocent man will be punished for the crime.

A fast-paced thriller with as many twists as the life of its author, Jeffrey A rcher.

Tickets £14 and £15.

southendtheatres.org.uk

5 Bonnie & Clyde. presented by Southend Operatic & Dramatic Society. Palace Theatre, Westcliff, Wednesday, March 27, to Saturday, March 30.

America’s most notorious lovers and bank robbers take the country by storm in this compelling amateur production.

At the height of the Great Depression, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow went from two small-town nobodies in West Texas to America’s most renowned folk heroes and the Texas law enforcement’s worst nightmares.

Fearless, shameless, and alluring, the Tony-nominated Bonnie & Clyde from the legendary Frank Wildhorn (Jekyll And Hyde, Civil War, Dracula) is the electrifying story of love, adventure and crime that captured the attention of an entire country.

Tickets £17-£19.

southendtheatres.org.uk