Review: Hallowe’en Party (Hercule Poirot #39)

Title: Hallowe’en Party
Author: Agatha Christie
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: William Morrow
Source: Purchased
Format: Paperback
Release Date: September 3, 2001
Rating: ★★★

Goodreads Synopsis:

A teenage murder witness is drowned in a tub of apples… At a Hallowe’en party, Joyce—a hostile thirteen-year-old—boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no-one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, 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…

Review:

At a children’s Halloween party, 12-year-old Joyce brags about once seeing a murder. Later in the evening, she was found drowned in an apple bobbing barrel. Hercule Poirot is called in to investigate her murder, which leads him to solve the murder that Joyce witnessed.

This was a complicated murder mystery. I thought it would have more of a Halloween theme, since the title is Halloween Party. After the initial scene of the party where Joyce is murdered, the Halloween theme disappeared from the story.

Before Poirot could solve Joyce’s murder, he had to solve the possible murders that Joyce could have witnessed. On the surface, these murders didn’t seem connected to each other or to Joyce. These incidents were complicated and distracted from the main mystery of Joyce’s murder.

The ending of this mystery made sense, but it was a complicated journey to the answer. This wasn’t one of my favourite Agatha Christie mysteries.

What to read next:

Have you read Hallowe’en Party? What did you think of it?