Sir George and Lady Stubbs, the hosts of a village fête, hit upon the novel idea of staging a mock murder mystery. In good faith, Ariadne Oliver, the well known crime writer, agrees to organise their murder hunt.

Despite weeks of meticulous planning, at the last minute Ariadne calls her friend Hercule Poirot for his expert assistance. Instinctively, she senses that something sinister is about to happen…

Beware – nobody is quite what they seem!

I was smiling through the first half of this book. After setting aside the last two Christie books, ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’ and ‘Destination Unknown’, I was glad to find that ‘Dead Man’s Folly‘ opened well. It was fast, direct and amusing. I liked that Poirot was involved from the very beginning, well before the first body had hit the ground. I especially liked that he was dragged into the affair by the inimitable Mrs Oliver who leashed him by his curiosity and tugged so hard that he jumped on a train the same day without knowing anything about why he’d been summoned.

Poirot spent the first half of the book flipping between bemusement and frustration. He shared Mrs Oliver’s sense that something about the planned murder mystery game was off but he didn’t know what it was. The cast of characters was nicely drawn (although I did have to push aside the casual misogyny, snobbery, racism and xenophobia that almost all the characters took for granted). The first body caught Poirot and Mrs Oliver by surprise. They literally stumbled over it.

The police then took over the investigation. Poirot remained bemused and played, at most, a supporting role to the Inspector investigating the death. What followed was closer to a police procedural than Poirot’s normal probing and posturing. Most of the information is gathered by the police, with Poirot acting, for once, as a good listener in whom people are willing to confide. I particularly enjoyed watching the police and Poirot both struggle to get past the defences of Mrs Folliat, who seemed to me to be a more aristocratic version of Jane Marple, only playing for the other side.

The second half of the book was entertaining but didn’t live up to the promise of its beginning. It seemed to me that everything apart from the cleverness of the plot started to fade. Mrs Oliver disappeared without any further contribution. Neither the police nor Poirot could turn the information that they’d gathered into a solution. Time passed. The story almost stalled Then, suddenly, so suddenly that it felt rather rushed, Poirot worked it out and the killer was identified.

I thought the plot was ingenious and the exposition was skilful but I rather got the impression that Agatha Christie ran out of steam and looked for a way to share the cleverness of the crime with as little effort as possible. The big reveal was a nicely written scene but it still felt like a bit of an infodump.

I enjoyed ‘Dead Man’s Folly‘ but I was left with the feeling that I’d have ranked it as one of Christie’s best offerings if it had been baked for a little longer and if there’d been a little more of Mrs Olivier to brighten things up a bit.