Hallowe’en Party (Poirot)

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Poirot lays out the solution to Mrs Oliver and Mrs Butler. Rowena began an affair with Garfield while her dying husband was still alive. Disgusted by this, Rowena's aunt wrote a codicil that left her fortune to Olga. The lovers then plotted to discredit Olga's claim, hiring Ferrier to replace the codicil with a deliberately clumsy forgery to ensure Rowena inherited everything; the real codicil has now been found by the police. Both Olga and Ferrier were murdered to conceal the deceit, but Rowena suspected someone had witnessed the disposal of Olga's body. Rowena killed Joyce when she claimed she had witnessed a murder, unaware that Joyce had appropriated Miranda's story. The dropping of the vase, which Mrs Whittaker witnessed, was to disguise the fact Rowena was already wet from drowning Joyce. Leopold was murdered because he asked Rowena for money, and she suspected he knew something.

The ending of the book was nothing but painful. Christie labored at building suspense using all sorts of techniques to the point where the techniques got in the way and the reading was simply wearisome. She holds off on revealing who-dun-it until long after the reader has any doubts, making the denouement simply a relief that the book was almost over, rather than a delightful surprise.

Joyce told everyone at the party she had once seen a murder, but nobody believed her, since she was known for her wild imagination. Yet, I look at the date of this novel—1969—and realize that perhaps one of my favorite mystery authors was simply getting tired of her characters and writing to meet a deadline. Perhaps she had used up all of her suspenseful endings and gripping characterizations. Granted, Curtain--a novel that ranks with her best works—was still to come, but I think this novel was part of the reason she was so ready to give Poirot his send-off.

A child dies at a Halloween party setting in motion a past hidden crime. At least that is what Ariadne Oliver thinks when she summons Poirot, and Poirot's "little grey cells" are quite in agreement. The local police are skeptical whether the present crime has any connection with a past undetected one, but Poirot, being quite sure, pursues his own investigation in that line. Needn't say that Poirot is absolutely right and for the first time, so is Mrs. Oliver's intuition.

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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. At a Hallowe'en party held at Rowena Drake's home in Woodleigh Common, thirteen-year-old Joyce Reynolds tells everyone attending she had once seen a murder, but had not realised it was one until later. 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. The novel reflects in many respects its time of publication at the end of the permissive sixties, but nowhere more so than when a character uses the word "lesbian" in Chapter 15. The Secret of Chimneys - The Seven Dials Mystery - Cards on the Table - Murder is Easy - Towards Zero

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.During preparations for an 'eleven plus' teenage Halloween party, thirteen-year-old Joyce Reynolds brags about once witnessing a murder. Known to be a bit of a fibber liar storyteller, no one believes her, causing her to stomp out and run home. I'm not a fan of the Queen of Detective stories and this novel is no exception. The killer is calculated from the first third, everything else is perceived as a pile of unnecessary details and abstract reasoning. Psychological reliability tends to zero, although the story with the codicil is played out gracefully.