Hallowe'en Party

This book started out SO WONDERFULLY and I was convinced it was going to be among my top favorites of Christie's. Unfortunately, the mystery lost steam and became a hopeless tangle of interconnected subplots that were somehow wrapped up neatly in one quick debriefing sesh with Poirot. Such is the wont of Christie's subplots, I suppose.

This mystery seemed a bit darker than those Poirot usually handles, perhaps because it involved the death of a child. That sort of cast a pall over the first few chapters and made it nice and Halloweeny, but that feeling dissipated over time and I was left feeling mainly confused and relieved that I finally had my answer. I was also glad that my stab-in-the-dark guess at the murderer turned out to be correct but I had no real basis for my beliefs and still probably could not explain everything that happened at the end.