Dead Man's Folly (1956)

Agatha Christie is one of the golden age writers - an nice little cozy with lots of clues, lots of red herrings and a twist at the end that I didn't see coming.

Hercule Poirot receives a frantic phone call from his friend Ariadne Oliver, a writer of murder mysteries. She has created a live murder game for a fête to be held in the grounds of Nasse House which is the home of Lord and Lady Stubbs but she believes there is real danger lurking at the House and she begs Poirot to come immediately. Oliver gives Poirot little to go on but her feelings and, perhaps because of this, he fails to prevent the murder of the young girl who was only supposed to be playing the role of victim in the murder game. He subsequently participates in a stop-start investigation before finally solving the crime.

The person who recommended this to me highlighted the humour of the book and as that is an element of crime fiction I enjoy and hadn’t really associated with Christie before I thought it would be an interesting choice for me. I wasn’t disappointed. The Ariadne Oliver character really does make a nice contrast to the somewhat prissy and proper Poirot with her ability to laugh at herself and it does seem like Christie was having a bit of fun with her genre by using the ‘mystery within a mystery’ twist.

This twist is also a perfect device for Christie’s favourite ploy: misdirection of her readers. Even though I know that her plots are always complex and that the obvious clues are red herrings to be ignored I still didn’t come close to picking up on the key hints that led to the solution. As almost always with Christie’s books, the uncovering of the murderer follows a wonderfully convoluted and unexpected journey. One of the things I liked about this book is that Poirot didn’t seem quite so cocky as he is in earlier stories. He doesn’t inveigle himself into every single interrogation and for some time it seems as if he might not even solve the mystery at all. I found this slightly more humble Poirot more likable than I have in the past.

I notice that some people mention struggling to keep track of all the people who appear in this book and I think this is where listening to the audio book had me at an advantage. David Suchet is a superb narrator and manages to provide all the characters a distinctive voice which is very helpful in such a dialogue-rich story. I must admit I am becoming quite addicted to Suchet’s narrations of Christie’s works. ( )

This is an interesting novel because the solution to the murder eludes Hercule Poirot until he realises while doing a jigsaw puzzle that he has been looking at some information he has had all along the wrong way around.

It is one of those stories where you keep thinking of the title because the obvious murder victim is female, so who or what is the "dead mans folly"? There is a folly, a building placed on the estate by Sir George Stubbs soon after he arrived, or is Lady Stubbs, supposedly a little intellectually wanting, the folly?

Ariadne Oliver's mock murder mystery backfires when the Girl Guide who was to pose as the murder victim is actually strangled. Hercule Poirot is on the spot because Mrs Oliver was already uncomfortable with how things were going. She had the feeling of being manouvred and called her friend on the day before the fete to see what he thought.

There is not a lot of social or historical comment in DEAD MAN'S FOLLY. We know it is set post World War Two, because the original owners of the house, the Folliats, lost both their sons in the war.
Sir George Stubbs came along at the right time as the buyer of the house as old Mrs Folliat found herself unable to pay the death duties incurred by the death of her husband and two sons. The villagers had assumed it was destined to become a school or a hotel.
Sir George Stubbs appears to have "new money" which he is spending extravagantly on ventures like the folly and a tennis pavilion.The house is next door to a back packer's hostel, with European young people staying there. And another of the characters is an "atom scientist".
All of these items serve to place the novel in the early 1950s,

I found the final explanation a bit extravagant but it worked well enough.There are certainly clues along the way that the reader tends to gloss over. ( )

The ‘folly’ of the title is actually an architectural term defined as “an eccentric, generally non-functional structure erected to enhance a romantic landscape.” Of course, the play on words using the more commonly understood meaning of the word is intentional. In this classic Christie, Adriadne Oliver arranges a mock Murder Hunt for charity and calls in her friend Hercule Poirot when a real body is discovered. Although this was published in 1956, it has the feel of one of Christie’s slightly older stories: the classic country estate, the Lord & Lady, the house guests, and so on.

In addition to the word play of the title, there is the gentle mockery of Christie herself, on whom Ariadne Oliver is said to be based. So she sets up a murder and doesn’t know who the murderer is. Very well-done, excellently clued but still perplexing mystery.

Read this if: you’re looking for a classic English country whodunit set in the mid-twentieth century. 4 stars ( )

It's a village fête with a twist: instead of a treasure hunt, noted mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver has been tasked with devising a "Murder Hunt". Sounds like a lot of fun! However, Mrs. Oliver is concerned. She has a strange feeling that things could go wrong. So she calls in Hercule Poirot, on the pretence of being the prize-giver for the Murder Hunt, but unfortunately he is too late to prevent a real murder…

This will be one of the final novels adapted for Agatha Christie's Poirot, and I have to say this seems like one that will work better on the screen. I found the book itself kind of plodded along until the murder, and then it took Poirot much longer than seemed usual to crack the case. The solution, once revealed, was very clever, albeit not entirely expected from my point of view. Perhaps a more attentive reader than I will pick up the clues more carefully. ( )