Halloween Bingo 2025
This was a reread for me. It was the very first Hercule Poirot book that I ever read (9 years ago). I have 36 under my belt now. I know M. Poirot much better, plus I know Ariadne Oliver. I enjoy every book that includes her. I didn't appreciate her on first reading. Now I love her scatty fluttering.
This is a perfect Halloween choice, featuring the party referenced in the title and including a suitably appropriate murder. Teenage Joyce is drowned in the tub used for apple bobbing while the party continues in another room. How could no one notice? Did it have anything to do with Joyce's claim that she witnessed a murder? Mrs. Oliver goes directly to Poirot with her worries and he finds himself interviewing many residents of Woodleigh Common.
Several times in this book, people question Poirot's mental acuity, although not to his face. There have been indications in her previous novels that Christie was concerned about aging. In Third Girl, Poirot worries that a young woman is correct when she pronounces him too old. Tuppence in By the Pricking of My Thumbs muses on a similar theme. When this book was published, Christie would have been in her late seventies. I can't be certain, but it seems that age was a source of worry that she passed on to her characters. It seems to me that she was still very much in control of her faculties at this point. My mother had a fear of what she called “losing her marbles," something I share with her and, apparently, Ms. Christie.
I read this book for the Marauding Corsairs square of my Halloween Bingo card after pouring my bottle of Transformation Potion on it in order to change it to Halloween.
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