Dead Man's Folly

by Agatha Christie and Ana Ban

Book Overview

Eccentric mystery lover Ariadne Oliver's weekend game of mock murder is a big hit. But if it's just a game, then why all the blood? Luckily, one of the players is Belgian sleuth, Hercule Poirot.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671694847
• ISBN13: 9780671694845
• Release Date: August 1982
• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Vintage Poirot

Discovering an Agatha Christie mystery you've never read is like discovering gold. And Dead Man's Folly is Hercule Poirot at his best. Even near the end of the book, you wonder if he is actually going to be able to solve this one. Good friend and mystery writer, Ariadne Oliver, unexpectedly calls Poirot and imperiously demands the little detectives' presence at a village fete in Devon, where a Mystery Hunt is about to take place. She worries that it won't just be a fake murder. Intrigued, our hero immediately takes the train to the village of Nassecombe to try to put a stop to whatever is afoot. Mrs. Oliver turns out to be correct in her assumptions and Hercule is terribly perturbed that he wasn't able to prevent it. As usual there are lots of red herrings and a totally convoluted solution. An excellent read.

WILL SOMEONE LET THE WOMAN SPEAK?

What "improvements" have been made for the Berkley edition? There are already major differences in punctuation, word choices, and scene breaks between the original Collins and Dodd Mead editions of this novel. There are further differences between the Dodd Mead editions republished by Random House/Avenel and the Dodd Mead editions republished by Simon & Shuster/Pocket. There are further differences still in the Signet, Bantam, and Black Dog & Leventhal editions. For every publishing house putting out her works, there seem to be a new batch of editors altering Agatha Christie's words and the sound of her voice. What's the matter with these publishers? Whose voice do they think we want to hear when we sit down to a novel by Agatha Christie? And what will she sound like twenty years from now? It's frightening that her estate has failed to see the importance of guarding her words as she wrote them. Please tell me I'm not the only one here who senses that a crime has been committed.

I just love Mrs. Oliver

I started reading this story but lost interest part way through. when I finished it, it was by listening to David Suchet's excellent reading on an audio book. One of the chief attractions for me in this book is the wonderfully random Mrs. Oliver. She just cracks me up with her hairdos and outfits and idiotic comments. Of course the story is great, Christie at her best...I didn't guess the murderer, but I like to be surprised.

An Under-Appreciated Christie Thriller

Agatha Christie has, once again, given us a great thriller with amazing plot twists that concludes to an amazing climax with the book, Dead Man's Folly. The book begins when the infamous Hercule Poirot is told by his secretary, Miss Lemon, that he has received a call from a well-known mystery-novel writer and friend named Adriane Oliver. Ms. Oliver was hired by a group of neighbors to create a plot and clues for a "murder hunt" set at a local fête. As she tells Hercule Poirot, she suspects that something deeper than the "murder hunt" will happen. So, she invites Poirot to come and "give out prizes" or, in other words, investigate. At first Poirot believes that the paranoid Ms. Oliver is simply exaggerating, but when Adriane Oliver's prediction proves correct, Poirot is suddenly raveled in a twisted and confusing case. Everyone's a suspect, including attractive and supposedly dim-witted Hattie Stubbs, the young architect, Michael Weyman, the wealthy Sir George Stubbs, or even the long-time resident Amy Folliat. Now the question is, whodunit?