I picked up Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party recently, because it’s the season for it, and I found the most interesting part of it on the dedication page.

To P. G. Wodehouse

whose books and stories have brightened my life for many years. Also, to show my pleasure in his having been kind enough to tell me he enjoyed my books.

It’s too bad this story isn’t a real zinger. Even a bold or ambitious effort that doesn’t quite pay off would have been good. But Hallowe’en Party is a somewhat fluffy tale that needs content editing.

A thirteen-year-old girl is drowned in a large bucket of water for apple bobbing during a Halloween party. Who would do such a thing? Perhaps it was a disturbed boy–they’re everywhere nowadays. But the girl did boast of seeing a murder a few years ago. Is it possible someone felt threatened and silenced her?

Many pages are spent rehashing mundane details that don’t advance the plot or open cans of red herring. How many characters need to complain about disturbed individuals who should be cared for in psychiatric wards or the dreadful mental health of modern children? “I don’t need to tell you,” they say repeatedly just before telling you the same thing you heard a few pages back.

Add to this Poirot pulling local history out of the air at a few points and his occasional observation on how remarkable this common something is. And why is he wearing apparently sensible shoes when he climbs into the quarry garden on page 85 and not again for the rest of the book, even though he continues to walk all around the place? He says he wears tight, patent leather shoes that hurt his feet because he thinks they present him properly. How did he ever put on the sensible shoes if he can’t do it again later?

My initial guess of the murderer at a third of the way into it proved true. That was unsurprising but good; any other explanation would have ruined the book.