Halloweenie

Hercule Poirot’s novelist friend Ariadne Oliver is visiting a friend in the country, and helping out with a Halloween mystery party for the local children. The party appears to be going well, until a young girl is murdered in the apple-bobbing tub. Who could possibly have killed an innocent child?

Turns out the kid wasn’t very well liked, she was a big fibber. Even the morning of the party, she was telling stories about having witnessed a murder. Mrs. Oliver calls in Hercule Poirot to catch the girl’s murderer. Could she have been killed by the same person involved in the murder she witnessed? Or did she even witness a murder?

Poirot gets to work ferreting out all the secrets of the town and works out why the girl was killed and by whom (of course). He solves a few other lingering mysteries as well, because that’s how he does.

The mystery was kind of all over the place, and Christie lost me a little bit with killing a kid. I guess she had to mix it up a little bit as her career went on. Of course I would recommend, because even a less than brilliant Christie is still miles better than most other writers.