Average Agatha (still good though)
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Hallowe'en Party is an enjoyable book that is quite gripping right from the start (except for the first chapter which is a bit on the dull side). The plot thickens (and I say 'thickens' literally because it does become quite complex) making the reader want to keep turning pages. Whilst the storyline is cleverly pieced together- Agatha Christie style- I found that the book was somewhat predictable. I use the word 'predictable' loosely because many things did puzzle me until the conclusion of the book, but the fact that I had been able to guess the basic ending of the book did ruin the who-dun-it atmosphere. To sum up, I would suggest the book for a quick, enjoyable read (the book is only approx. 200 pages) and I would suggest it to anybody who likes detective stories but I do warn potential readers that the book is not in the same league as some of Agatha Christie's masterpieces eg. 'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd' and 'Murder on the Orient Express.'
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Late vintage Christie.
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At the age of 79, when this book was published, Agatha Christie was not quite capable of producing the tighly-plotted, ingenious puzzle fiction that poured from her pen when she was 39. When one is the world's most published author of all time, however, and when one is still able to hold a pen, the pressure to keep producing yet another 'Christie for Christmas' cannot be discounted. It was to be several years before Agatha Christie's daughter said, 'Now, that is enough, Mum'. This is clearly an elderly author at work here, cunningly presenting characters who are mainly elderly themselves, who can get away lines like, 'You know what young people are like nowadays,' and who tend to end sentences with 'and that sort of thing'. Nevertheless, she provides much of the fun and challenge that you expect in her mystery novels, whatever their date of publication. Her popular creations Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver get yet another airing here, as they investigate the drowning in an apple-bobbing tub of a thirteen-year-old girl at a children's Hallowe'en party, a girl who not long before had boasted that she had once witnessed a murder. Exploring the possibility that the girl were telling the truth, Poirot probes several local deaths and disappearances. Amongst vague and gossipy eldery characters, and unbelievably articulate and poetic adolescents, Poirot makes his way with waxed moustache and patent leather shoes to a solution to the mystery. Agatha Christie repeats many of the tricks she tried in her earlier books. You will find echoes of children's nursery rhymes here and a crime that occurs in a familiar domestic setting. You'll also find an especially lyrical few pages in praise of gardens, mid-way through the novel. Agatha Christie, a garden enthusiast herself, never wrote anything better than these few pages. So expect late vintage Christie here. You may not like the attempt at a nail-biting finish, but you can still respect the author's way of setting up a baffling mystery
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Actually I really enjoyed the plays!
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Opinions and reactions are obviously personal..and because of this I decided to write this review in case someone with similar tastes to mine should be put off by the previous review and so miss a couple of evenings fun escapism.
These plays seem well up to the BBC's usual standard, well acted and pretty true to the books. I've also enjoyed The Sittaford mystery, The Pale Horse and Murder in Mesopotamia if that helps anyone judge similarity of tastes...???
Have fun ! I think these are def worth listening to.
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A good book for a winter night
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Christie's vivid depiction of a Hallowe'en party gone wrong is capable of putting caution into the heart of any parent. The charachterisation and Christie's precise judgement of the nature of children are breath taking. However, unusually the book has one or two flaws. The book starts slowly but quickly gains interest and some major hints as to the culprit make it fairly easy to predict the end. I would recommend this book to anyone who has read another Christie, but for a "first-timer" it could be a bit disappointing in it's sublime simplicity.
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A Disappointment
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Although I love the BBC's series of Agatha Christie radio plays I was very disappointed with these two. Although I own these two, Halloween Party & Five Little Pigs, I listen to them only very occasionally & I think that if I'd heard them before I'd bought them I would have spent my money on something else. The faults with these plays are evident. They are weak stories by an author who can be both magnificently good and magnificently bad, but here is merely mediocre. Tepid. Dull. And they haven't been adapted very well, they are merely shorter, simpler versions of stories that were quite skimpy to begin with. However, the team working on these radio dramatisations is very expert and they have managed to salvage something from the rubble. There is some entertainment to be found here, just not quite enough to my way of thinking. Five Little Pigs is actually rather enjoyable if you are not in the mood for anything even remotely challenging. It's quite a good "insomnia tape": something to listen to when you want to drift off to sleep. But Halloween Party is actively irritating and so doesn't work even in this capacity...
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