Three act Tragedy

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Mystery / Christie, Agatha	4-week checkout	Due 05-24-2024

Originally published in 1934.
First act: Suspicion -- Second act: Certainty -- Third act: Discovery.
Thirteen guests gather for drinks at actor Charles Cartwright?s seaside escape. Benign Reverend Babbington, who rarely imbibes, takes one sip of his beverage and keels over dead. Soon after Sir Bartholomew Strange convenes the same party and meets his own end after swallowing port. One death could be natural, but two mean murder. Hercule Poirot, who was present at both affairs, stages a third soirée to catch the cocktail killer.

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Slightly Easier to Solve submitted by Meginator on August 1, 2022, 3:13pm This particular installment of Hercule Poirot’s adventures finds him without the reliable Captain Hastings, and the shift to a third-person narrative amplifies some elements of the mystery while retaining most (but not all) of the sly humor that runs throughout the entire series. This particular mystery seemed to contain more overt clues than most, and I was able to put more of it together on my own than I can with most of these novels. Nonetheless, the plot still has its complexities and it is always interesting to find Poirot embroiled in a case that personally involves him; indeed, here he is actually present for the murder he is called upon to solve. This book just misses out on the top tier of Poirot mysteries due to a few too many complications and some obvious conclusions, but it still provides an engaging story with plenty of surprises and possibly the best final line in the series (so far, at least).