Forgotten Books: HALLOWEEN PARTY, Agatha Christie

Another contribution to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books theme.

HALLOWEEN PARTY is the first Agatha Christie book recorded in my "little green book" in 1976. During that year my records show that I read 94 books, and 28 of them were Agatha Christie, so you could say that I had a bit of a binge!

HALLOWEEN PARTY was #36 in the Hercule Poirot series.
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 . . .

If you go to Amazon, you can read the first chapter.

HALLOWEEN PARTY probably doesn't really qualify as a forgotten book, nor Agatha Christie as a forgotten author, so I'm probably just paying homage to an author who without doubt had a huge effect on my reading tastes. I used to classify Christie as "light reading" but I think that I probably underestimated how clever a writer she really was.

I rarely read books a second time, but there are times when I feel I should take on a "Christie" reading project - start at the beginning with THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES and read my way to the last one, SLEEPING MURDER (Miss Marple's last case). Before 1975 I had already read quite a number, and I think I have probably read near all of them now.

How many novels did Agatha Christie write?
From WikiAnswers
+ 82 as Agatha Christie
+ 6 under the pen name Mary Westmacott
+ 2 as Christie Mallowan
+ her autobiography
= 91 total

Fantastic Fiction says 80.

Interesting Biography: http://www.readprint.com/author-21/Agatha-Christie
Should you want a list, then there is a good one that looks pretty complete on Wikipedia.

If you want some (200) Trivia questions check this site.
And here are 43 online quizzes of varying difficulty.