Review: Tale doesn't suffer for abbreviation
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 3, 2014
For reasons I won't go into, Dame Agatha Christie was unable to publish this tale in its original novella format and it eventually became the novelDead Man's Folly. The story suffers not at all for its abbreviated form, and, whether you've already enjoyed "Dead Man's Folly," as I have, or you're coming to the mystery with fresh eyes, you should like it very much.Ariadne Oliver, Christie's ditzy, tongue-in-cheek alter ego, imperiously summons Hercule Poirot to Greenshore House, purchased by the unpolished self-made man Sir George Stubbs for his much-younger wife, Hattie. Mrs. Oliver has been hired to put on a so-called "Murder Hunt" -- a scavenger hunt for clues to solve a fake murder mystery -- as part of a fte. But the intuitive Mrs. Oliver senses that something sinister infects Greenshore House and wants Poirot to discover what that might be -- which, of course, he does, but not before an unpleasant, snooping Girl Guide is murdered in the manor house's folly.While all cozy lovers will delight in "Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly," Christie devotees will especially appreciate this never-before-published work as they compare the 1952 novella to the 1954 novel into which Christie expanded it.