Hallowe'en Party
It is a sinister story that centres around the murder of a child. When young Joyce Reynolds announces at a Halloween party that she once saw a murder committed, everyone laughs at her; Joyce is well-known as a compulsive, and often believable, liar. Opinions on Joyce's veracity are however challenged when later that night she is found drowned in the bowl that had been used for apple-bobbing. A distressed Ariadne Oliver, a crime novelist modelled to a certain extent on Agatha Christie herself, approaches Poirot for help with the case. In order to solve the present murder Poirot has to reach back into the past, and find a crime which nobody (except the murderer and a solitary witness) knows has been committed.
In many ways this is Christie at her best. The crime - and what led up to it - is cleverly plotted. Poirot and Ariadne Oliver are their usual sparkling selves, and the young heroine, Miranda, is beautifully portrayed, as are (and I won't reveal who it is) the villain/s. Agatha Christie's portrayal of the youths involved in the plot is less convincing, and this is probably partly because of her age at the time she was writing this - so younger children and older people are much more convincing than those in their teens.
What she is exceptionally good at is creating a malevolent atmosphere. There is a brooding sense of evil throughout the novel which builds wonderfully to the climax. It is also one of her funniest novels - there were occasional moments when I laughed out loud, most notably in Poirot's conversations with the two young men, Desmond and Nicholas. This is very clever as it provides a real counterpoint to the general atmosphere of evil. It's not her best novel, but for anyone who wants to know why Agatha Christie is so admired it's not a bad place to start.
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