Hallowe'En Party (Hercule Poirot Mysteries (Audio))

Rating:
Summary: Fun Murder Mystery
Review: Ariadne Oliver, a mystery writer, is invited to a Hallowe'en Party in Woodleigh Common, where she is staying with a friend of hers. The local group of children and teenagers are quite excited to have her visiting them, and one child in particular, tells a tall tale about witnessing a murder to impress Ariadne. Well, before you know it, that child is dead. Drowned in the apple bobbing bucket. What was supposed to be good fun has turned into vicious, intentional murder. Now Ariadne has called on her friend, Hercule Poirot, to help solve the mystery, and set everyone in Woodleigh Common's minds at ease.

I found this to be a very entertaining mystery. Something perfect to read during the month of October, and maybe even on Halloween, in between those quick trips to the door to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters.

Erika Sorocco

Rating:
Summary: Late vintage Christie.
Review: At the age of 79, when this book was published, Agatha Christie was not 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.

Rating:
Summary: She's still got it
Review: Christie still has it, the ability to bewilder and amaze, at age 79! She shows herself capable of making poignant and truthful observations, throughout the book, about youth, the changing state of society, and of course, the mind of those capable of crime and murder. I am always facinated by the amount of quotable quotes in any Christie novel.

It is true that some later Christie novels are not quite as palatable as her earlier work, but this is simply not one of them. As fresh as her first works, with a believable ending and a incredible and intriguing motive for one of her characters, I'm wondering how anyone could read this and not see the value. Christie shines when she takes out Poirot, and the duo of Oliver and Poirot is a treat.

The only flaw I see here is Christie's inability to see 'lower class' servants as capable of being worth as much as the upper classes, but she was a Victorian, and raised with prejudice. Still, the continual references in her books to servants who morbidly get excited about death, who are stupidly superstitious, who cannot make inferences, or in short behave like common sheep get to be wearing. Christie is also racist; Frenchwomen, Englishwomen, Americanwomen, and those from the 'colonies' are highly bred and of good bearing, but those from Spain, Italy, and other 'ethnic' countries are too often dismissed in a single sentence and described as having 'a simple good nature and flashing teeth'. Ouch. I won't even go into how she describes Arabics.

So long as you can view her work for what it is, a excellently crafted, yet lighthearted murder mystery, written by an Englishwoman born to priviledge, who lived in somewhat of an ivory tower, you will be able to enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Why Ariadne Oliver stopped eating apples
Review: Mystery writer, Ariadne Oliver was visting a friend and agreed to help her organize a Halloween party for the village teenagers. The party was a great success despite Ms. Oliver's assistance until a rather overbearing young girl was found drowned in the apple bobbing bucket.

Ariadne turned to her friend, Hercule Poirot, for help in solving this crime. Together the two work to discover just who could have wanted the 13 year old dead and why. Along the way scandals from the past are uncovered, another murder committed and unsupected ones found. Apparently the peaceful village had been hiding blackmail, forgery, multiple murders, greed and madness for years.

The only things that were stumbling blocks to my enjoyment of the story were the lack of explanation of various terms like 'eleven plus' and references to the English school system - grammar school vs secondary modern and A-levels. I found these references distracting from the main story. The other thing I found annoying was a bit where a mother, who had been described at length as a loving, caring, responsible and intelligent parent wants to leave her child behind while she goes away for a few days. Not only does she want to leave the child behind but proposes to leave her behind with a family that had already had two family members murdered in the past two weeks. I found that very unrealistic and a very uncharacteristic 'blooper' on the part of Christie.

Still this 1969 novel has held up well, the action could take place today just as easily as 40 plus years ago. I highly recommend this mystery, particularly for fans of the scatty Ariadne Oliver.

Rating:
Summary: Why Ariadne Oliver stopped eating apples
Review: Mystery writer, Ariadne Oliver was visting a friend and agreed to help her organize a Halloween party for the village teenagers. The party was a great success despite Ms. Oliver's assistance until a rather overbearing young girl was found drowned in the apple bobbing bucket.

Ariadne turned to her friend, Hercule Poirot, for help in solving this crime. Together the two work to discover just who could have wanted the 13 year old dead and why. Along the way scandals from the past are uncovered, another murder committed and unsupected ones found. Apparently the peaceful village had been hiding blackmail, forgery, multiple murders, greed and madness for years.

The only things that were stumbling blocks to my enjoyment of the story were the lack of explanation of various terms like 'eleven plus' and references to the English school system - grammar school vs secondary modern and A-levels. I found these references distracting from the main story. The other thing I found annoying was a bit where a mother, who had been described at length as a loving, caring, responsible and intelligent parent wants to leave her child behind while she goes away for a few days. Not only does she want to leave the child behind but proposes to leave her behind with a family that had already had two family members murdered in the past two weeks. I found that very unrealistic and a very uncharacteristic 'blooper' on the part of Christie.

Still this 1969 novel has held up well, the action could take place today just as easily as 40 plus years ago. I highly recommend this mystery, particularly for fans of the scatty Ariadne Oliver.

Rating:
Summary: Ariadne + Apples = The real Agatha
Review: Of course it?s not between the best of Agatha, but all books that have a "Ariadne Oliver the famous crime novelist" are specials to me. My Grandmother, a lady with a great resemblence to Agatha was a fan of Ariadna and so do I. Perharps basically I like the mix of emotions that Agatha put in Ariadne, letting her character transmit her real ideas about her famous detective:

"But you?ve written lots of books" said Joyce; "you make a lot of money out of them, don?t you?"
"In a way," said Mrs. Oliver, her thougths flying to the Inland Revenue.
"And you?ve got a detective who?s a Finn."
Mrs. Oliver admitted the fact. A small stolid boy not yet, Mrs. Oliver would have thought, arrived at seniority of the eleven-plus, said sternly, "Why a Finn?"
"I?ve often wondered, " said Mrs. Oliver Truthfully.

Certainly is a deligth to hear Ariadne/Agatha talk through this book. If this book is a little slow in the begginning you have a good "finale" and I can bet that you are not going to find the murder until the end.

Rating:
Summary: Always a good read
Review: Readers can always count on Agatha Christie for a fun and interesting whodunit. In this 60's addition to the Hercule Poirot series, the intrepid detective is asked to help solve a murder which occurs during a Halloween party. Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, one of the party hostesses, requests Poirot's help in discovering who murdered a young girl at the party by holding her head underwater in the apple bobbing bucket. The girl had boasted that she had witnessed a murder and Poirot suspects that the murderer was trying to protect his identity by killing her. The detective does his usual thorough job of investigating and uses his superior logic to sort through the facts until he discerns who the murderer is. This is a good read, as always.

Rating:
Summary: Chilling Poirot mystery
Review: The story begins innocently enough - a children's Hallowe'en party. One of the adult guests is Ariadne Oliver, the famous crime novelist. One of the children at the party, in order to impress Mrs. Oliver claims to have seen a murder committed. No one takes any notice, dismissing her story, until the girl turns up dead at the end of the party. Horrified by the tragedy, Mrs. Oliver turns to her old friend Hercule Poirot for help, despite her belief that women should be running Scotland Yard! Poirot begins investigating and realizes that the child was killed in order to prevent discovery of another, much older crime. But raking up the past is dangerous as it can cause a killer to strike again...very chilling mystery, notable for its air of subtle menace and cruelty. Although the identity of the killer was fairly obvious midway through the book, I think Christie afficionadoes will like the psychological analysis of the motives for the crime, as well as of the criminal. Another good Poirot mystery.

Rating:
Summary: Clueless about the book.
Review: This is one of Agatha Christie's most visual mystery. At a party, a girl was drowned in the apple-bobbing tub shortly after boasting she witnessed a murder. The fact that she admitted she didn't know it was a murder at that time did not make her, a habitual liar, believable - but somebody apparently felt threatened enough.

Mrs Ariadne Oliver who was present at the party was very upset at the death, especially since it was to her, a famous mystery writer, that the dead girl Joyce was boasting to. She enlisted the help of Hercule Poirot immediately.

The setting of this mystery was at a English suburb. Agatha Christie tried to give vivid description of the place and the people, which would be the key to solving the mystery. A beautiful garden, an elfin wisp of a girl, a small community where most people know what happened - including three mysteries from the past. Unfortunately, she could not carry out a perfect job, and had to resort to some rather outright adjectives.

This was especially jarring for a murder mystery. The challenge to the readers was not who was the culprit, but rather could Hercule Poirot unravel the thread to bring in the evidence, the motivation and bring a proper conclusion to the mystery.

The key would be found in the visual description - I am sure it was very clear in Agatha Christie's mind the picture she wanted to convey, but alas, her words failed to adequately expressed her ideas. Properly done, this would have been a fantastic movie, if the producers could find the right locations.

Rating:
Summary: a nice time killer
Review: This is one of Christie's easier mysteries to figure out but the murders are just nasty enough to be almost comical. The drowning of children shouldn't be funny but here, I think Agatha was in a dark, black comedy mood. Besides, the 2 victims are rather obnoxious... so it makes it more humorous. While you'll guess the whodunit right away (how can you not?), she does throw in a few twists at the end that only Poirot could have unravelled. Not a great book, but not bad either. After all, Christie did write it and she seldom wrote a bad story in her career. Good stuff, as one reader mentioned, to curl up with in autumn weather.