Rating: 
Summary: Nice mystery more suited for the screen than the print
Review: This is one of Agatha Christie's most visual mystery. At a party, a girl was drowned in the apple-bobbing tub shortly after boasting she witnessed a murder. The fact that she admitted she didn't know it was a murder at that time did not make her, a habitual liar, believable - but somebody apparently felt threatened enough.Mrs Ariadne Oliver who was present at the party was very upset at the death, especially since it was to her, a famous mystery writer, that the dead girl Joyce was boasting to. She enlisted the help of Hercule Poirot immediately. The setting of this mystery was at a English suburb. Agatha Christie tried to give vivid description of the place and the people, which would be the key to solving the mystery. A beautiful garden, an elfin wisp of a girl, a small community where most people know what happened - including three mysteries from the past. Unfortunately, she could not carry out a perfect job, and had to resort to some rather outright adjectives. This was especially jarring for a murder mystery. The challenge to the readers was not who was the culprit, but rather could Hercule Poirot unravel the thread to bring in the evidence, the motivation and bring a proper conclusion to the mystery. The key would be found in the visual description - I am sure it was very clear in Agatha Christie's mind the picture she wanted to convey, but alas, her words failed to adequately expressed her ideas. Properly done, this would have been a fantastic movie, if the producers could find the right locations.
Rating:
Summary: a nice time killer
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Review on Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party
Review: This was a good book to read, unfortunatly the author seemed to stray a bit from the main topic. Both the beginning and the ending were excellant but the middle 150 pages were rather dull. It basically repeated itselve over and over again, constantly saying the same clues. The beginning starts off with a Hallowe'en Party held in the home of Mrs. Rowena Drake. A young girl, Joyce Reynolds, was known as a potentail lier. She tried to impress Mrs. Oliver,(a mystery author) by saying that she had once witnessed a murder. Later on that evening while everyone else was enjoying watching the snapdragon Joyce was found laying dead with her head in a bucketful of water used for bobbing apples in. She obviously been murdered. Mrs. Oliver called in her good friend Hercule Poirot to crack the case. Towards the middle of the book it seemed to get rather bland. For the next 3/4's of the book Poirot travels around the town questioning everyone. All the people say pretty much the same thing, they're just presented in slightly different ways. A lot of other mysteries get tied into it. In the end the final solution is presented in a rather confusing way. This is a good book to read once, and only once. Written By: LFC
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