It helps that aspiring widow Jane Wilkinson is a standout in the Christie pantheon. “I want you to be doing things.” So does the reader, and yet it is remarkable how seamlessly the story flows even as very little actually happens. “It doesn’t suit me at all,” his sidekick Hastings grumbles. Here, Poirot makes a few key visits early on before deciding that it “suits” him better to stay at home and let the clues come to him. She rarely resorts to the endless rounds of interviews that cause so many mysteries to drag in the middle, preferring instead to let the suspects circulate freely among themselves, dropping clues and misdirection as they go. One of Dame Agatha’s gifts as a novelist is her ability to present enormous amounts of information to the reader in a way that seems utterly natural. Yet the sheer pleasure of reading Christie at her peak easily overcomes any objections.

The 1930s was Agatha Christie’s miracle decade, as she cranked out one stone-cold classic after another: Murder on the Orient Express, The ABC Murders, Death on the Nile, And Then There Were None, not to mention introducing Miss Marple in Murder at the Vicarage. It’s interesting that Lord Edgware Dies is often included among this elite company, as it is a puzzle mystery without much of a puzzle. Poirot soon has his hands full, dealing with the affairs of actors, dukes, and one very merry widow. Stranger still, a dozen witnesses swear that she was the thirteenth guest at a dinner party at exactly the same time.

Strange, then, that Jane should visit her husband the next day, immediately before he is found murdered. To Poirot’s surprise, her spouse Lord Edgware easily agrees to a divorce. Poirot, somehow or other I’ve just got to get rid of my husband!” But this time, she’s the one seeking an audience with a celebrity, master detective Hercule Poirot. “When planning a murder never depend upon a woman doing what she says she’ll do.”Īs a famous actress, Jane Wilkinson is used to being the center of attention.

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