Oh my goodness, this was tedious. I've read a fair few Agatha Christie books in my time, though none starring Hercule Poirot, and quite enjoyed them. Not this. Written in the 1960s, it had the usual cosy middle class feel to it- which is fine, that's the genre. Wading through the long conversations which introduced each character became taxing in the extreme. The descriptions of the preparations for a children's party in the village where the story took place were no better. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to go on. The reasons for the murder of a not-much-liked child when finally revealed were flimsy in the extreme, and the back story, involving a long-disappeared au pair who'd apparently fled didn't convince. The cloak and dagger machinations at the end were frankly risible. I was so happy to turn to the very last page and put the book aside. ( )

The idea of killing a child - and killing her in such a way! - gave me the creeps, and the reactions of people to this death were quite horrible - her younger brother shrugs his shoulders and says something like: "Oh, well, who cares", and other people were no better, joyfully claiming that the dead girl was a lier and that they never liked her. That would be enough for me to have a problem with this book, but it was also boring and repetitive, and I was quite relieved when I finished reading it. I didn't enjoy this book. ( )

A thirteen-year-old girl, Joyce Reynolds, is murdered at a Halloween party, drowned in the tub where the partygoers had earlier bobbed for apples, and Hercule Poirot is called in by his friend, crime novelist Ariadne Oliver, who was a guest in the home where the murder occurred. Hours before the party, Joyce made a pronouncement that she had once witnessed a murder; however, all the individuals Poirot interviewed unanimously dismissed her as the teller of tall tales, casting doubt on that revelation as a motive. Despite rather flat characters and snails’ pace plot, I enjoyed the complicated unraveling of the mysterious deaths related to Joyce’s. Not my favorite Christie work. ( )

The newest Poirot movie was based on this, but very little of the story remained the same. This one didn't hold my attention like others in the series. A young girls is killed after claiming to have witnessed a murder, but everyone says she was a compulsive liar. Poirot works with a famous author to try to solve the case. Not a bad mystery, just missing some of the urgency in Christie's others. ( )

A clever mystery that leaves the reader guessing. A young girl outs drowned in a peculiar way and Peroit is called in. The characters are introduced as he interviews them. A flavor of the English countryside is added. ( )