Hallowe’en Party (Poirot)

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This best-selling author of all time wrote 66 crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and six novels under a pseudonym in romance. Her books sold more than a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation. According to Index Translationum, people translated her works into 103 languages at least, the most for an individual author. Of the most enduring figures in crime literature, she created Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. She atuhored The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of modern theater. A drawing made by Michael Garfield of Miranda Butler, bares the inscription Iphigenia. In Greek mythology, king Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to please the goddess Artemis so the Greek ships would reach the city of Troy. Superintendent Spence brought to Poirot the case solved in Mrs. McGinty's Dead and which they discuss in Chapter 5. The case is also recollected by Poirot in Chapter 3, when Poirot recalls Mrs. Oliver getting out of a car and “a bag of apples breaking”. This is a reference to her first appearance in Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, Chapter 10. Barnard, Robert (1990). A Talent to Deceive – an appreciation of Agatha Christie – Revised edition. Fontana Books. p. 194. ISBN 0-00-637474-3.

Kenneth Branagh's third movie as detective Hercule Poirot after Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile takes many creative licenses from the source material, a 1969 book called Hallowe'en Party. Hallowe’en Party, Hercule Poirot #36, the second to last Poirot novel, published in 1969, and the second to last written, since Curtain was written in the forties, ready to publish when the end would finally come about (which didn’t happen for more than a quarter of a century later!). To say this is better than you’d expect is no compliment, of course, but it ust is. I had little expectations except to be happily surprised at the cleverness of some aspects of the ending, as I always am, and in that respect was not disappointed.Woman's Own, serialised in 7 abridged instalments 15 Nov - 27 Dec, 1969, illustrated with uncredited photographic montages. The next day, Mrs. Oliver goes to London seeking Hercule Poirot's help. She tells him that after snapdragon, Joyce went missing and was later found drowned in an apple-bobbing tub in the library. Mrs. Oliver repeats to Poirot Joyce's comment that she had once witnessed a murder; Mrs. Oliver now wonders if Joyce might have been telling the truth, which might provide someone with a motive for killing her.

A beautiful garden built within an abandoned quarry was designed by Michael Garfield, a handsome narcissistic man, for Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe. He lived in a lodge on the grounds to oversee the work, and still lives there. Hostile 13-year-old Joyce, known to be a compulsive liar, tells everyone at a Halloween Party for “Plus Elevens” that she once saw a murder; when no one believes, she leaves in a huff and is promptly drowned in the tub for bobbing apples. This is the second of the Poirot books, both of them written when Christie was a grandmother, where children die, and others almost die. An expression of grandparently worry? This is one that I've read multiple times, and I still mostly enjoy the twists and turns in the story. However, even with a bratty kid or two getting axed, this one is just missing that special something that makes most of her books 4 star reads for me, so it's not one of my favorites. Elizabeth Whittaker, a mathematics teacher, witnessed Rowena become startled and drop a vase of water outside the library while the party-goers were playing snap-dragon. Leopold is found dead. Rowena informs Poirot that she had seen him in the library the night of the party, and she believes he witnessed his sister's murder.The trouble with you is,” said Mrs. Oliver…”the trouble with you is that you insist on being smart. You mind more about your clothes and your moustaches and how you look and what you wear than comfort. Now comfort is really the great thing. Once you’ve passed, say, fifty, comfort is the only thing that matters.” Poirot advises the police to search the woods near the quarry. The search finds Olga's body in an abandoned well, stabbed in the same manner as Ferrier. Fearing another murder, Poirot sends a telegram to Mrs Oliver, instructing her to take Judith and her daughter to London. Poirot goes to Apple Trees to interview Rowena Drake. Rowena doesn't believe Joyce's murder story; rather, she thinks it was just Joyce's attempt to impress Mrs. Oliver. Next to be interviewed are the Reynoldses. Mrs. Reynolds can't say that Joyce ever told her that she saw a murder. Leopold, Joyce's younger brother, doesn't believe that Joyce saw a murder either, but he did hear Joyce telling everyone about it. Ann, Joyce's older sister, doesn't believe either that Joyce had seen a murder; she says Joyce was a liar and a fraud.

The first half of the novel contains several discussions in which anxiety is voiced about the Criminal Justice System in Great Britain. This in part reflects the abolition in 1965 of capital punishment for murder. Agatha Christie also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, and was occasionally published under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan. It's good, its complex but simple, its well thought out, it doesn't rush, it doesn't dawdle, Poirot is in virtually the whole novel, and so is Ariadne Oliver. There's some great characters, a brilliant final deduction and its wonderfully believable, but still dash it all it is only 4 stars. When Joyce mentions to Ariadne Oliver in Chapter 1 that she should have themed the party around a fake murder in honour of her presence, Ariadne replies "never again". This is a reference to Dead Man's Folly, an earlier Poirot novel where she is asked to write a fake murder for a charity fête that turns into a real one.

Bunson, Matthew (2000). The Complete Christie: An Agatha Christie Encyclopedia. Simon & Schuster. p. 69. ISBN 978-0671028312. Miranda and Mrs Butler discuss the story of Jael and Sisera when discussing how different people might commit a murder.