The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

Rating: 3.5 Stars ★★★☆☆

The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known as “The Styles Case” has now somewhat subsided.

Plot

After the Great War, life can never be the same again. Wounds need healing, and the horror of violent death banished into memory.

Captain Arthur Hastings is invited to the rolling country estate of Styles to recuperate from injuries sustained at the Front. It is the last place he expects to encounter murder. Fortunately he knows a former detective, a Belgian refugee, who has grown bored of retirement …

The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie

Rating: 3.5 Stars ★★★☆☆

In this narrative of mine I have departed from my usual practice of relating only those incidents and scenes at which I myself was present.

Plot

There’s a serial killer on the loose, bent on working his way through the alphabet. And as a macabre calling card he leaves beside each victim’s corpse the ABC Railway Guide open at the name of the town where the murder has taken place. Having begun with Andover, Bexhill and then Churston, there seems little chance of the murderer being caught – until he makes the crucial and vain mistake of challenging Hercule Poirot to frustrate his plans…

The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie

Rating: 3 Stars ★★★☆☆

It was close on midnight when a man crossed the Place de la Concorde.

Plot

When the luxurious Blue Train arrives at Nice, a guard attempts to wake Ruth Kettering from her slumbers. But she will never wake again – for a heavy blow has killed her, disfiguring her features almost beyond recognition. What is more, her precious rubies are missing.

The prime suspect is Ruth’s estranged husband, Derek. Yet Poirot is not convinced, so he stages an eerie re-enactment of the journey, complete with the murderer on board…

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie

Rating: 3 Stars ★★★☆☆

When Captain Roger Angmering built himself a house in the year 1782 on the island off Leathercombe Bay, it was thought the height of eccentricity on his part.

Plot

When a beautiful woman is found strangled to death at a holiday resort, the murder appears to be a crime of passion. But could it have been something more evil and premeditated altogether? Hercule Poirot has his vacation interrupted in this mystery.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Rating: 4 Stars ★★★★☆

In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in The Times.

Plot

First, there were ten – a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they’re unwilling to reveal – and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. And only the dead are above suspicion.

Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie

Rating: 3 Stars ★★★☆☆

Mrs Ariadne Oliver had gone with the friend with whom she was staying, Judith Butler, to help with the preparations for a children’s party which was to take place that same evening.

Plot

At a Hallowe’en party, thirteen-year-old Joyce boasts that she once witnessed a murder. No one believes her. But within hours her body is found, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. 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…

The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie

Rating: 4 Stars


About

A group of people gathers on a pleasant evening. Before long, each of them tells the story of a crime, one they know the conclusion to. The others have to guess at the solution of the story. They tend to forget the elderly lady sitting with them, knitting peacefully. But Miss Marple unerringly comes to the right conclusions.