Dead Man's Folly, Agatha Christie

This Book

Ariadne Oliver requests that Hercule Poirot join her on the job of her latest challenge because she thinks there will be a murder. Poirot, bored for the moment, agrees. Miss Lemon thinks he's crazy, but he goes anyway. 

Once there, Ms. Oliver explains she was hired to arrange a Murder Hunt. She had several ideas, but as she was in the house planning the hunt, she felt someone behind the scenes arranging things. Although happy with the arrangement of the fake murder, she believes she may have been hired to stage an actual murder. She begs Poirot to prevent it. To the rest of the inhabitants of Nasse House, Poirot is just a famous detective there to pass out prizes. Subtly he tries to get a read on the household. First he meets with a couple of tourist youths, young ladies staying at the hostel next to Nasse House. The neighboring estaste has been turned into one, something Nasse House prevented when Mrs. Folliat, the last of the Folliat family sold the estate to Sir George Stubbs and his wife, Lady Hattie Stubbs. It was as close to keeping it in the family as she could get, Hattie having been her ward. 

Poirot meets the rest of the household, the Legges, Alec and Peggy, the Masterstons, Captain Warburton, the effecient secretary to Sir George, Miss Brewis, and the architect hired to rebuild the old folly, Michael Weyman. Poirot listens to the household, respectful of Ms. Oliver's "female intuition".  After a couple of days, he believes Ms. Oliver might be wrong. Nevertheless, they both get swept into the plans for the grand and they both go and participate in the Fete. Almost laughing at how foolish Ms. Oliver seems to have been.

And then, in the middle of the afternoon, just before the discount price to get onto the house grounds, Marlene, the 14 year old girl hired to be the body, is actually strangled in the boathouse and by the means Ms. Oliver laid out. Both Ms. Oliver and Poirot are horrified. The local cops are perplexed. 

As Inspector Bland investigates the case, he is baffled. Poirot, cannot explain who did it either. They call for Lady Stubbs, but she had disappeared. And now, her husband Sir George is worried she will turn up dead. Poirot is at a loss, but after the inquest of the Marlene, Poirot returns home. When old Merdell is found dead as well, Poirot returns to give his condolences to his family. From there, he find a missing link, which enables him to solve the case before anyone else is murdered. 

My Thoughts

I remembered aspects of the David Suchet Poirot too vividly to be surprised by any of the plot twists. Like so many of these stories where I saw the adaptation, but it was many years ago, so I don't remember the intricacies of the plot. Nor can I be certain, though Poirot did an admirable job sticking to the source material, what has and has not been changed.  Nevertheless, I do feel I vaguely remembered it. Once I know what I'm looking for, I can now judge whether or not the author has played fair with me. I can say, Agatha Christie is the master of fair play puzzles. We do get all of the clues we need. 

Might I say, that in this regard, where deductive reasoning is the height logic and modernity, made these types of stories a lot of fun. The more modern approach, of gritty details, sarcastic sleuths, and science to save the day has far less charm than these breezy reads. This isn't a surprising Christie, but it is a good one. And I don't know why anyone says she got worse as she got older. They've always been hit or miss for me. However, if you are looking to avoid bad late Christie books, this one is safe. And the puzzle is there, not too difficult for you to figure out, but not too easy either. 

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

I believe in past chronologies of these leatherette editions, we've discovered this book is firmly in the first set of leatherettes, available between 1983 ish and 1987. The second set of leatherettes, later on the decade has a slightly different set of colors, more green, I believe. This book is in really good condition, regardless of its age. There is some staining on the bottom of the book, looks like it might have had coffee spilled on in and then wiped away immediately. The book was not the easiest to hold in my hand, although not as stiff as a new book. I would guess the reason this edition is in my library is that it's a later Christie that few people read. Certainly it predates my library's current habit of marking the date it entered circulation in the book. That goes back to sometime in the 1990s. My guess is this is a procedure (it's not a policy because I didn't vote on it as a trustee) instituted as part of the computer system when they finally got computers. This is an area that frequently lags behind by about a decade, although, I see less of that in my area these days. I'm not certain what our earliest date is on this blog, maybe at some point I will go through and check, but it's not today. We have previously established these books were about $20 each when they were purchased if bought individually, although, I suspect the entire collection was seen as an investment when the library expanded. $20 is the number I will use. 

This Book                                                         $20.00

Library Items Reviewed This Year                $730.93

Private Books

This Book                                                       $00.00

Total of Private Books                                    $85.88

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year         $817.81

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