[.ca] Halloween Party (ISBN 0425129632)

Why Ariadne Oliver stopped eating apples:
Mystery writer, Ariadne Oliver was visting a friend and agreed to help her organize a Halloween party for the village teenagers. The party was a great success despite Ms. Oliver's assistance until a rather overbearing young girl was found drowned in the apple bobbing bucket. Ariadne turned to her friend, Hercule Poirot, for help in solving this crime. Together the two work to discover just who could have wanted the 13 year old dead and why. Along the way scandals from the past are uncovered, another murder committed and unsupected ones found. Apparently the peaceful village had been hiding blackmail, forgery, multiple murders, greed and madness for years. The only things that were stumbling blocks to my enjoyment of the story were the lack of explanation of various terms like 'eleven plus' and references to the English school system - grammar school vs secondary modern and A-levels. I found these references distracting from the main story. The other thing I found annoying was a bit where a mother, who had been described at length as a loving, caring, responsible and intelligent parent wants to leave her child behind while she goes away for a few days. Not only does she want to leave the child behind but proposes to leave her behind with a family that had already had two family members murdered in the past two weeks. I found that very unrealistic and a very uncharacteristic 'blooper' on the part of Christie. Still this 1969 novel has held up well, the action could take place today just as easily as 40 plus years ago. I highly recommend this mystery, particularly for fans of the scatty Ariadne Oliver.

a nice time killer:
This is one of Christie's easier mysteries to figure out but the murders are just nasty enough to be almost comical. The drowning of children shouldn't be funny but here, I think Agatha was in a dark, black comedy mood. Besides, the 2 victims are rather obnoxious... so it makes it more humorous. While you'll guess the whodunit right away (how can you not?), she does throw in a few twists at the end that only Poirot could have unravelled. Not a great book, but not bad either. After all, Christie did write it and she seldom wrote a bad story in her career. Good stuff, as one reader mentioned, to curl up with in autumn weather.

She's still got it:
Christie still has it, the ability to bewilder and amaze, at age 79! She shows herself capable of making poignant and truthful observations, throughout the book, about youth, the changing state of society, and of course, the mind of those capable of crime and murder. I am always facinated by the amount of quotable quotes in any Christie novel. It is true that some later Christie novels are not quite as palatable as her earlier work, but this is simply not one of them. As fresh as her first works, with a believable ending and a incredible and intriguing motive for one of her characters, I'm wondering how anyone could read this and not see the value. Christie shines when she takes out Poirot, and the duo of Oliver and Poirot is a treat. The only flaw I see here is Christie's inability to see 'lower class' servants as capable of being worth as much as the upper classes, but she was a Victorian, and raised with prejudice. Still, the continual references in her books to servants who morbidly get excited about death, who are stupidly superstitious, who cannot make inferences, or in short behave like common sheep get to be wearing. Christie is also racist; Frenchwomen, Englishwomen, Americanwomen, and those from the 'colonies' are highly bred and of good bearing, but those from Spain, Italy, and other 'ethnic' countries are too often dismissed in a single sentence and described as having 'a simple good nature and flashing teeth'. Ouch. I won't even go into how she describes Arabics. So long as you can view her work for what it is, a excellently crafted, yet lighthearted murder mystery, written by an Englishwoman born to priviledge, who lived in somewhat of an ivory tower, you will be able to enjoy.

Ariadne + Apples = The real Agatha:
Of course it's not between the best of Agatha, but all books that have a "Ariadne Oliver the famous crime novelist" are specials to me. My Grandmother, a lady with a great resemblence to Agatha was a fan of Ariadna and so do I. Perharps basically I like the mix of emotions that Agatha put in Ariadne, letting her character transmit her real ideas about her famous detective: "But you've written lots of books" said Joyce; "you make a lot of money out of them, don't you?" "In a way," said Mrs. Oliver, her thougths flying to the Inland Revenue. "And you've got a detective who's a Finn." Mrs. Oliver admitted the fact. A small stolid boy not yet, Mrs. Oliver would have thought, arrived at seniority of the eleven-plus, said sternly, "Why a Finn?" "I've often wondered, " said Mrs. Oliver Truthfully. Certainly is a deligth to hear Ariadne/Agatha talk through this book. If this book is a little slow in the begginning you have a good "finale" and I can bet that you are not going to find the murder until the end.

Always a good read:
Readers can always count on Agatha Christie for a fun and interesting whodunit. In this 60's addition to the Hercule Poirot series, the intrepid detective is asked to help solve a murder which occurs during a Halloween party. Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, one of the party hostesses, requests Poirot's help in discovering who murdered a young girl at the party by holding her head underwater in the apple bobbing bucket. The girl had boasted that she had witnessed a murder and Poirot suspects that the murderer was trying to protect his identity by killing her. The detective does his usual thorough job of investigating and uses his superior logic to sort through the facts until he discerns who the murderer is. This is a good read, as always.