Book Review: Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie

This was my first Agatha Christie novel which I read because I was looking forward to A Haunting in Venice. I read the novel right before I saw the movie. The movie I loved. The novel I didn’t.

This novel follows Hercule Poirot as his friend Mrs. Oliver asks him to investigate the death of a girl, Joyce Reynolds at her Halloween party. His investigation leads him to multiple murders with multiple murderers.

I am not much of a fan of books that tell their stories through dialogue, which seems to be Agatha Christie’s way of storytelling. Maybe it is because my college education stomped exposition out of my storytelling until it became something I detest in novels. Who knows, but I find this book succeeds when Hercule is thinking his way through his ideas or feelings. Its failures, or when I descend into fits of boredom, is when he spends pages questioning people only to talk over the same events repeatedly. Unendingly.

But I digress. Perhaps I’ll give another one of Christie’s novels a chance. Perhaps I’ll try one that is not about Hercule Poirot so I don’t have to read through him asking a dozen people the same questions.

2 out of 5 stars because the novel bored me to tears. On the upside, the latest adaptation of this directed by Kenneth Branagh fixes these flaws and is actually watchable. So, in very rare form, I’m saying the movie is better than the novel. This has only happened with me once or twice before (Doctor Sleep is the only other example of this that I can currently think of).