Hallowe'en Party

Hallowe'en Party is a work of detective fiction by English writer Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club in November 1969 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. This book was dedicated to writer P. G. Wodehouse.
The novel features Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and the mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver, who begins the novel in attendance at a Hallowe'en party. A girl at the party claims to have witnessed a murder, which at the time she was too young to realize was such. Disbelieved by those around her, the girl then is drowned in an apple-bobbing bucket, and Poirot must solve a two-pronged mystery: who killed the girl, and what, if anything, did she witness?
Synopsis
While everyone is preparing for a Hallowe'en party at Rowena Drake's home in Woodleigh Common, 13-year-old Joyce Reynolds tells everyone she had once seen a murder before. When the party ends, Joyce is found dead, drowned in an apple bobbing tub. Ariadne Oliver, attending the party while visiting her friend Judith Butler, calls on Hercule Poirot to investigate. With help from retired Superintendent Spence, Poirot makes a list of deaths and disappearances in the last few years in Woodleigh Common:
Rowena's aunt, Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe, died suddenly, and her au pair, Olga Seminoff, disappeared when a codicil that favoured her in her employer's will was found to be a forgery.
Leslie Ferrier, a lawyer's clerk, was stabbed in the back by an unknown assailant.
Charlotte Benfield, a 16-year-old shop assistant, was found dead with multiple head injuries.
Janet White, a teacher at Elms School, was strangled to death.
Poirot learns a few interesting facts:
Judith's daughter Miranda was Joyce's closest friend, and the pair shared secrets.
Joyce was known to be a teller of tales to gain attention.
Elizabeth Whittaker, a mathematics teacher, witnessed Rowena become startled and drop a vase of water outside the library while the party-goers were playing snap-dragon.
Ferrier had previous convictions for forgery, and many suspected that he and Olga were working together to steal Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe's fortune.
A one-time cleaner of Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe had been witness to her employer making the codicil.
A beautiful garden built within an abandoned quarry was designed by Michael Garfield, a narcissistic man, for Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe.
The victim's brother, Leopold Reynolds, has become flush with money of late.
Leopold is found dead. Rowena informs Poirot that she had seen him in the library the night of the party, and she believes he witnessed his sister's murder.
Poirot advises the police to search the woods near the quarry. The search finds Olga's body in an abandoned well, stabbed in the same manner as Ferrier. Fearing another murder, Poirot sends a telegram to Mrs Oliver, instructing her to take Judith and her daughter to London. Miranda meets with Garfield, who takes her to a pagan sacrificial altar with the intention of poisoning her. However, he commits suicide when two men, recruited by Poirot, save her life. Miranda reveals that she had witnessed the murder Joyce claimed she had seen; she saw Garfield and Rowena drag Olga's body through the quarry garden. Miranda had not been present at the preparations for the party, so Joyce tried to seek famous Ariadne's attention by claiming she had seen the murder.
Poirot tells Mrs Oliver what he has learned. While her husband was alive, Rowena began an affair with Garfield. Her aunt discovered this affair, and as a punishment, she wrote a codicil that left her fortune to Olga. When the pair learned of this change, they plotted to discredit Olga's claim, hiring Ferrier to replace the codicil with a clumsy forgery, ensuring Rowena inherited everything; the codicil was later found. Both Olga and Ferrier were murdered to conceal the deceit, but Rowena suspected someone had witnessed the disposal of Olga's body. She killed Joyce when she claimed she had witnessed a murder, unaware that she had appropriated Miranda's story. The dropping of the vase which Mrs Whittaker witnessed was to disguise the fact Rowena was already wet from drowning Joyce. Leopold was murdered because he witnessed Rowena murdering his sister and blackmailed her.
Poirot muses that Rowena likely would have shared a similar fate to Olga as Garfield's motivation for the murder was his narcissistic desire to construct another perfect garden with Rowena's money; he would have had no more need of her as she had provided him with a Greek island. Poirot reveals that Garfield was Miranda's father; Judith is not a widow, but a single mother. She had met Garfield years before, then met him when settling in the area with Miranda. While Garfield knew Miranda was his daughter, he was willing to kill his own child to ensure he could create another garden. Satisfied with Poirot's help, Judith thanks him.
Characters
Hercule Poirot – Belgian detective, asked to help investigate the murder of Joyce Reynolds by his friend Oliver.
Ariadne Oliver – crime fiction writer and Poirot's friend.
Alfred Richmond – Chief Constable of the local police.
Dr Ferguson – local physician and the appointed police surgeon.
Joyce Reynolds – first victim of the case. A thirteen-year-old girl attending Rowena's Halloween party.
Olga Seminoff – an au pair girl from Herzegovina.
Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe – wealthy widow.
Leslie Ferrier – local solicitor's clerk, murdered before the start of the novel.
Janet White – a local teacher, dead from strangulation before the start of the novel.
Leopold Reynolds – second victim of the case. Joyce's younger brother.
Rowena Drake – Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe's niece.
Miranda Butler – a twelve-year-old girl who was ill and unable to attend the party.
Judith Butler – Mrs Oliver's friend, and mother of Miranda.
Ann Reynolds – Joyce's and Leopold's older sister.
Mrs Reynolds – Joyce's and Leopold's mother.
Michael Garfield – a landscape gardener, recently returned to the area.
Elizabeth Whittaker – a teacher of mathematics and Latin at The Elms school.
Miss Emlyn – local headmistress of The Elms school.
Mrs Goodbody – local cleaning woman, attending the party in the role of a witch.
Jeremy Fullerton – Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe's solicitor, and the employer of Ferrier.
Nicholas Ransom – an 18-year-old, who attended the party.
Desmond Holland – a 16-year-old, who attended the party.
Harriet Leaman – Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe's former cleaner.
George – Poirot's faithful valet.
Superintendent Spence – a retired police officer.
Elspeth McKay – Superintendent Spence's sister.
Literary significance and reception
Contemporaneous reviews were largely negative, though tempered by an appreciation of Christie's advanced years. A Canadian critic called it a disappointment but remarked that Christie is allowed a few of those, describing both Poirot and the book as "weary". Author and academic Robert Barnard, who in 1980 wrote a monograph on Christie, said that Hallowe'en Party has the feel of something spoken into a dictaphone and transcribed without editing. Christie did sometimes use a dictaphone when writing. According to her grandson, "She used to dictate her stories into a machine called a dictaphone and then a secretary typed this up into a typescript, which my grandmother would correct by hand."
Robert Weaver in the Toronto Daily Star of 13 December 1969 wrote "Hallowe'en Party...is a disappointment, but with all her accomplishments Miss Christie can be forgiven some disappointments...Poirot seems weary and so does the book."
Robert Barnard stated "Bobbing for apples turns serious when ghastly child is extinguished in the bucket. The plot of this late one is not too bad, but the telling is very poor: it is littered with loose ends, unrealised characters, and maintains only a marginal hold on the reader's interest. Much of it reads as if spoken into a tape-recorder and never read through afterward."
More recent reviews, however, have shown a critical reassessment of the novel at work. In Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World, a 2020 non-fiction study of every Poirot novel for the character's centennial, Mark Aldridge describes Hallowe'en Party as "a highly memorable and intriguing novel that makes a lasting impression on the reader." While commenting on the novel's flaws, such as unresolved story threads and an "unusually underwritten murderer", Aldridge writes it has "an energetic and exciting opening, one excellent clue hiding in plain sight, and a tone of grim fascination towards the murder throughout." He notes how Christie was downbeat about what she perceived as rising cruelty and criminality in the wider world and that she read reports on current crime as a part of her inspiration.
References and allusions
References to other works
Superintendent Spence brought to Poirot the case solved in Mrs McGinty's Dead and which they discuss in Chapter 5. The case is recollected by Poirot in Chapter 3 when Poirot recalls Mrs. Oliver getting out of a car and "a bag of apples breaking". This is a reference to her second appearance in Mrs McGinty's Dead, Chapter 10.
Miss Emlyn mentions in Chapter 10 that she knows of Poirot from Miss Bulstrode, who previously appeared as a character in Cat Among the Pigeons.
When Joyce mentions to Ariadne Oliver in Chapter 1 that she should have themed the party around a fake murder in honour of her presence, Ariadne replies "never again". This is a reference to Dead Man's Folly, an earlier Poirot novel where she is asked to write a fake murder for a charity fête that turns into a real one.
A letter was sent to Hercule Poirot from Mr Goby, who appeared in The Mystery of the Blue Train, After the Funeral, and Third Girl.
Mrs Rowena Drake is compared to Lady Macbeth by Poirot, and Michael Garfield titles his sketch of Miranda as Iphigenia, reflecting his plan.
Mrs Goodbody, a rich source of local insight, uses a well-known children's rhyme to express her view of the likely fate of Olga, when Poirot asks her in Chapter 16: Ding dong dell, pussy's in the well.
References to actual history, geography and current science
The first half of the novel contains several discussions in which anxiety is voiced about the criminal justice system in Great Britain. This in part reflects the abolition in 1965 of capital punishment for murder.
The novel reflects in many respects its time of publication at the end of the permissive 1960s, but nowhere more so than when a character uses the word "lesbian" in Chapter 15.
Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe placed her codicil in a book titled Enquire Within upon Everything, a real book of domestic tips published from 1856 to 1994.
Publication history
1969, Collins Crime Club (London), November 1969, Hardback, 256 pp
1969, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), 1969, Hardback, 248 pp
1970, Pocket Books (New York), Paperback, 185 pp
1972, Fontana Books (Imprint of HarperCollins), Paperback, 189 pp
1987, Ulverscroft Large-print Edition, Hardcover,
2009, HarperCollins; Facsimile edition, Hardcover: 256 pages,
The novel was first serialised in the weekly magazine Woman's Own in seven abridged instalments from 15 November to 27 December 1969, illustrated with uncredited photographic montages.
In the US, the novel appeared in the December 1969 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.
Adaptations
Radio
Hallowe'en Party was adapted for radio and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 30 October 1993, featuring John Moffatt as Hercule Poirot, with Stephanie Cole as Ariadne Oliver.
Television
British
The novel was adapted as part of the twelfth series of Agatha Christie's Poirot with David Suchet, with Zoë Wanamaker reprising her role as Ariadne Oliver. Guest stars include Deborah Findlay as Rowena Drake, Julian Rhind-Tutt as Michael Garfield, Amelia Bullmore as Judith Butler, and Fenella Woolgar as Elizabeth Whittaker. Charles Palmer (who also directed The Clocks for the series) directs this instalment, with the screenplay written by Mark Gatiss (who wrote the screenplay for Cat Among the Pigeons; he also appeared as a guest star in the adaptation of Appointment with Death).
The television adaptation shifted the late 1960s setting to the 1930s, as with nearly all shows in this series.
French
The novel was adapted as a 2014 episode of the French television series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie.
Graphic novel
Hallowe'en Party was released by HarperCollins as a graphic novel adaptation on 3 November 2008, adapted and illustrated by "Chandre".
Film
The novel was adapted by Kenneth Branagh in 2023 for his third Poirot film, re-titled A Haunting in Venice and relocated from England to the titular city. The film followed Branagh's previous Poirot adaptations Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and Death on the Nile (2022).
References
External links
Hallowe'en Party at the official Agatha Christie website
Hallowe'en Party at the new official Agatha Christie website
1969 British novels
Collins Crime Club books
Halloween novels
Hercule Poirot novels
British novels adapted into television shows
Novels first published in serial form
Novels set in the 1960s
Novels set in the United Kingdom
Works originally published in Woman's Own
Fiction about child murder
British novels adapted into films