Hercule Poirot agrees to help with the investigation at the request of his friend Ariadne Oliver. She was at the ill-fated party – she was naturally shocked with the outcome. Poirot never fails – she knows it. She pays him a visit and asks for help.

Poirot is old – really old now, in 1969. He must be over a hundred – but he is just as shrewd as ever, with the same wonderful knowledge of human psychology. He starts making inquiries, as things become more interesting. Where did that East European au pair girl go? Was the old lady’s will a forgery? And who killed the young forger? Poirot won’t accept everyone’s version of events – he needs to be sure. Everyone’s opinion on what happened can be wrong.

I don’t know how he guessed the name of the murderer. When asked, he answered simply, “He fitted”. Strangely enough, this novel is one of the very few written by this author, in which I was able to guess the true answer before finishing the book. And I would have given the same explanation. He fitted indeed. She fitted too.

Poirot’s interference didn’t save a little boy, Joyce’s younger brother Leopold. Those who have killed once will do it again, and so Leopold dies. But he acts just in time to save another young life – that of a charming 12-year-old girl called Miranda, Joyce’s closest friend. Without him, she would have been dead also, for the criminals want to achieve their goals so badly, they’d stop at nothing. They’ve been murdering people for about three years to get what they want. As Poirot says elsewhere, murder is a habit.

This book is one of Agatha Christie’s late works, and is written more poetically than most of her other books, crisp and cheerful. She describes the beauty of the nearby garden with so much love as if it were the most important part of her story; she dwells on it. She also dwells on the beauty of its creator – Michael Garfield. Life has taught me to be wary of men with too much beauty in them.

There are parts of the book I like re-reading, but overall it’s not one of my favourites. I don’t like it when I can guess the murderer(s) too early, and the book seems a bit too moody, but it was still quite interesting meeting this “different” Agatha Christie. It was useful also as cultural education – I’ve learned a lot about what people do at Hallowe’en parties. And meeting Ariadne Oliver was fun.

With the fourth crime everything seems to go wrong – and they catch the obvious murderer. The case is as clear as could be – so why isn’t Poirot satisfied?

He’ll eventually explain it all – of course he will. Once again we’ll be left dumbfounded by the genius of the author: who’d have thought it was like this! Oooooh, the way she turns it all around…

I read this book many years ago, when I just started reading in English. I picked it up from a library. Many years have passed, and now I visit the same library again, and there’s the same book standing on the shelf. Why not re-read it, I thought today…

Funny how the passage of time changes the way we perceive things… especially books. Last time I was so indignant with Poirot for the way he treated Thora Grey. There was, I thought, no ground at all for his innuendo! Now I’m reading it again – not a girl of 25 anymore, but an experienced, married woman of 38 – and I see it all so clearly. Of course he did have grounds! They are all here, staring me in the face…

But that’s not the most important thing to say about this book, of course – just the episode. What I have to say, if you are a fan of Agatha Christie’s books but haven’t read this partucilar one yet, you definitely should. It’s a masterpiece – a gem. You’ll be thrilled – and what’s more, you’ll discover a different Agatha Christie (yes, again – isn’t she different in any book she ever wrote?)

if, on the other hand, you’ve never read any of her books yet, “The ABC Murders” could be a good one to start with, if not a very typical one. I recommend it to you in any case – unless, of course, you hate detective stories. The way Poirot arrives at the identity of the murderer – the way he sets up his trap to get a confession out of him – it’s all pure genius and pure pleasure for any fan of the genre.

The daughter – a brave and decisive young lady – hired Poirot to investigate the murder and prove her mother’s innocence beyond doubt – so she could get married happily, have children and live a normal life unmarred by the grim shadows of the past.

Poirot hesitated – after all, sixteen years had passed since the day of the crime – but young Carla Lemarchant flattered him, and finally he agreed to take upon the impossible task.

In order to obtain the facts necessary for his investigation, he approached five people who were present in the house at the time of the crime (“five little pigs”), talked to them and got each of them to write up a narrative containing their personal perception of events preceding the crime – and the crime itself – as they remembered it.

The more he read, the more desperately impossible his mission looked – and yet he succeeded. He succeeded when things looked so hopeless that even Carla herself was prepared to give it all up. “The accepted version of certain facts is not necessarily the true one”, said he, and proved it with multiple examples as he narrated his own version of events in front of all the people involved in the case gathered, as is traditional with Hercule Poirot mysteries, in one big room to listen to him. The clue to the case was there – in the disproval of accepted versions of facts.

I’ll say no more…

However, if we bring ourselves to credit that, the rest of the novel is perfect. The characters are drawn with mastery; you can close your eyes and see Louise Leidner smiling at you with that special smile, at once charming and ruthless, which only women of a particular kind ever possess. You can see Amy Leatheran, the honest, compassionate and hard-working young nurse eagerly helping Poirot in his investigation to describe it later on in her written narrative. You can see Miss Johnson, plain and elderly, but devoted, companion of Dr Leidner’s — and you can’t help feeling sympathy for her hopeless love and desperate jealousy, which is doomed to end nowhere.

Male characters are done in the same detailed manner, but — perhaps, because the author is a woman, or, perhaps, because I’m myself a woman — I cannot see their inner passions and visualise them as clearly as I can do with female characters. Their feelings seem somewhat hidden beneath a cloak; their characteristic features — like Bill Coleman’s silly talkativeness or Carl Reiter’s shyness — look a little exaggerated. The most alive of them all is, perhaps, Dr Reilly, who is not one of the leading characters in the book, but adds a lot of charm to the episodes in which he participates with his dry, typically English humour, relaxing manner of speech and pleasant informality of ways. His daughter Sheila, who is surprisingly unlike her father in every way, adds a whiff of reality to the dreamy, fairy-tale-ish world of the novel: her rude, unpolished honesty won’t endear her to the reader, but she still makes one respect her in the same way as we might respect an enemy. It definitely takes some courage to talk the way she does, though you might just say her father has spoiled her. There’s a lot of truth in that, no doubt — and yet…

And, of course, there’s Poirot, who never seems to change — clever, cheeky and courteous, still staging the final disclosure of all secrets as someone might stage a play. He handles this case without his friend Captain Hastings. (Who needed to add him to the mix in the film? Amy Leatheran was just as good for the role!)

The environment, in which the events take place, teases my imagination. I have always had special feelings for ancient relics, excavations and people who dedicate their lives to archaeology, so the fact that almost everyone at the scene is an archaeologist has added to the charm of the book greatly. I’ve read it several times, and now I’m about to read it again.