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Loading... Hallowe'en Party (Poirot) (original 1969; edition 2001)by Agatha Christie (Author)
Work InformationHallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie (1969)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Hercule Poirot remains one of my favorite detectives. Yes, he is very self-absorbed, but he delivers the goods in the end. This story features the murder of a thirteen-year old girl. Why? The girl, Joyce Reynolds, claims to have witnessed a murder. Poor Joyce seals her fate with this boastful claim. Agatha Christie must insert other tidbits to heighten the suspense of the story: forgery, scenic gardens, disappearance of an individual. So many characters and the harsh and breath-taking landscape. The list of potential murderers grows, but Poirot eliminates many from the list and skillfully finds the killer. A fun tale of a scary holiday. ( ) Unfortunately, I didn't like it. I wanted but I couldn't enjoy the feeling and the rush as other "whodunnit" have done in the past. This felt like a farce, there was no draw and the depth but was tasteless as unleavened yeast. I tried to enjoy but there was no immense danger and no true groundbreaking tenacity with this one. Just felt placid and complacent. No pacing and no story. I love Agatha but I regret to say this is the worst work I've ever read by her. This is unfortunately one of Christie's boring Poirot novels. I don't even really have anything to say about this except that I really didn't like how Poirot handled the reveal and the case in general and also that I think people would have more sympathy and openly grieve for a murdered 13-year-old. In general, the book gave me the impression that people didn't really care and that includes Poirot, who with his long inaction puts another child in danger. An Enjoyable Late Hercule Poirot Mystery When reviewing a work, I ignore other adaptations unless necessary, but here, it is necessary, because the newest editions of this novel have been published under the title A Haunting in Venice rather than its original, Halowe'en Party. This is what's called "cross-marketing" for the 2023 film, but it's silly, because the original has no haunting - not even of the Scooby-Doo variety - and the setting is not Venice. There is, however, a Halowe'en party. There is also at least one murder, which Agatha Christie's iconic detective Hercule Poirot and his sometimes sidekick Ariadne Oliver - whom I greatly prefer to the pale John Watson imitation Arthur Hastings - must solve. Those are the only similarities with the film, which is an otherwise original script inspired solely by the title of the novel, which it doesn't use. Poirot novels don't need cross-marketing. They're like Snickers bars: Most people have had one before, and the ones who liked their last one will probably like this one, and the ones who didn't much like it before won't much like this one now. To be sure, there are also Snickers connoisseurs who savor and review each bite individually, but for casual fans like me, a Snickers bar is a Snickers bar with very little variation, and it's a reliably enjoyable treat. It's also unlikely Hallowe'en Party would be any reader's first Poirot novel, because even those introduced to the character through the recent film series would presumably start with the far more famous and far more faithfully adapted Murder on the Orient Express (1934) or Death on the Nile (1937) as the film series does. Connoisseurs may not like this novel as much because it was written and published in 1969, at the end of a decade that saw a general decline in popularity of the prim and proper locked-room British whodunits that were the character's and his creator's natural habitat of their interwar heyday. The series and its characters are showing their age, and frequent references are made to these darned kids today and their pop star fashions and sociopathic serial killers. In this "brave new world," Poirot and Christie with their lists of suspects and murders committed for love and/or money are the literary equivalent of an old pair of slippers, and just as welcome when enjoyed with a pot of hot tea by the fireplace on a cold autumn evening. Oh my goodness, this was tedious. I've read a fair few Agatha Christie books in my time, though none starring Hercule Poirot, and quite enjoyed them. Not this. Written in the 1960s, it had the usual cosy middle class feel to it- which is fine, that's the genre. Wading through the long conversations which introduced each character became taxing in the extreme. The descriptions of the preparations for a children's party in the village where the story took place were no better. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to go on. The reasons for the murder of a not-much-liked child when finally revealed were flimsy in the extreme, and the back story, involving a long-disappeared au pair who'd apparently fled didn't convince. The cloak and dagger machinations at the end were frankly risible. I was so happy to turn to the very last page and put the book aside. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to SeriesAriadne Oliver (7) Hercule Poirot (31) Belongs to Publisher SeriesSaPo (115) Scherz Krimi (842) Weltbild SammlerEditionen (4840) Is contained inPoirot: The Complete Ariadne Oliver: Vol 2: Third Girl, Halloween Party, Elephants Can Remember, The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie Has the adaptationIs abridged inNotable Lists
Fiction.
Mystery.
Historical Fiction.
HTML: Inspiration for the major motion picture A Haunting in Venice, directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh, coming September 2023! When a Halloween Party turns deadly, it falls to Hercule Poirots to unmask a murderer in Agatha Christie's classic murder mystery, Hallowe'en Party. At a Halloween party, Joyce??a hostile thirteen-year-old??boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the 'evil presence'. But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double-murderer.. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.912Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1901-1945LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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