Product Description

A teenage murder witness is drowned in a tub of apples...At a Hallowe'en party, Joyce -- a hostile thirteen-year-old -- boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no-one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the 'evil presence'. But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double-murderer!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #90070 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-20
• Format: Facsimile
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Review
"A thundering success! a triumph for Hercule Poirot" Daily Mirror

About the Author
Agatha Christie was born in Torquay in 1890 and became, quite simply, the best-selling novelist in history. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, written towards the end of the First World War, introduced us to Hercule Poirot, who was to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. She is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and another billion in 100 foreign countries. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels under the name of Mary Westmacott.

Customer Reviews

Late vintage Christie.
At the age of 79, when this book was published, Agatha Christie was not quite capable of producing the tighly-plotted, ingenious puzzle fiction that poured from her pen when she was 39. When one is the world's most published author of all time, however, and when one is still able to hold a pen, the pressure to keep producing yet another 'Christie for Christmas' cannot be discounted. It was to be several years before Agatha Christie's daughter said, 'Now, that is enough, Mum'. This is clearly an elderly author at work here, cunningly presenting characters who are mainly elderly themselves, who can get away lines like, 'You know what young people are like nowadays,' and who tend to end sentences with 'and that sort of thing'. Nevertheless, she provides much of the fun and challenge that you expect in her mystery novels, whatever their date of publication.

Her popular creations Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver get yet another airing here, as they investigate the drowning in an apple-bobbing tub of a thirteen-year-old girl at a children's Hallowe'en party, a girl who not long before had boasted that she had once witnessed a murder. Exploring the possibility that the girl were telling the truth, Poirot probes several local deaths and disappearances. Amongst vague and gossipy eldery characters, and unbelievably articulate and poetic adolescents, Poirot makes his way with waxed moustache and patent leather shoes to a solution to the mystery.

Agatha Christie repeats many of the tricks she tried in her earlier books. You will find echoes of children's nursery rhymes here and a crime that occurs in a familiar domestic setting. You'll also find an especially lyrical few pages in praise of gardens, mid-way through the novel. Agatha Christie, a garden enthusiast herself, never wrote anything better than these few pages.

So expect late vintage Christie here. You may not like the attempt at a nail-biting finish, but you can still respect the author's way of setting up a baffling mystery

Average Agatha (still good though)
Hallowe'en Party is an enjoyable book that is quite gripping right from the start (except for the first chapter which is a bit on the dull side). The plot thickens (and I say 'thickens' literally because it does become quite complex) making the reader want to keep turning pages. Whilst the storyline is cleverly pieced together- Agatha Christie style- I found that the book was somewhat predictable. I use the word 'predictable' loosely because many things did puzzle me until the conclusion of the book, but the fact that I had been able to guess the basic ending of the book did ruin the who-dun-it atmosphere. To sum up, I would suggest the book for a quick, enjoyable read (the book is only approx. 200 pages) and I would suggest it to anybody who likes detective stories but I do warn potential readers that the book is not in the same league as some of Agatha Christie's masterpieces eg. 'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd' and 'Murder on the Orient Express.'

A good book for a winter night
Christie's vivid depiction of a Hallowe'en party gone wrong is capable of putting caution into the heart of any parent. The charachterisation and Christie's precise judgement of the nature of children are breath taking. However, unusually the book has one or two flaws. The book starts slowly but quickly gains interest and some major hints as to the culprit make it fairly easy to predict the end. I would recommend this book to anyone who has read another Christie, but for a "first-timer" it could be a bit disappointing in it's sublime simplicity.