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[1] and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year.[2][3] The UK edition retailed for 25 shillings.[1] In preparation for decimalisation on 15 February 1971, it was priced on the dustjacket at £1.25. The US edition retailed at $5.95.[3] This book was dedicated to writer P. G. Wodehouse.

For other uses, see Halloween Party.

Hallowe'en Party
Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition
AuthorAgatha Christie
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
GenreCrime fiction
PublisherCollins Crime Club
Publication date
November 1969
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages256 (first edition, hardcover)
Preceded byBy the Pricking of My Thumbs 
Followed byPassenger to Frankfurt 

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. She attends the Halloween party that Joyce is killed during, while visiting a friend in the area.
  • Inspector Timothy Raglan – the investigating officer into Joyce's murder.
  • 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. Declared she once saw a murder, which becomes the focal point of the investigation.
  • Olga Seminoff – an au pair girl from Herzegovina. Was in service to Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe in her last years, but disappeared following her employer's death and the reading of her will.
  • Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe – wealthy widow. Died two years before the novel begins. One of the possible deaths considered as the murder witnessed by Joyce.
  • Leslie Ferrier – local solicitor's clerk, murdered before the start of the novel. One of the possible deaths considered as the murder witnessed by Joyce.
  • Janet White – a local teacher, dead from strangulation before the start of the novel. One of the possible deaths considered as the murder witnessed by Joyce.
  • Leopold Reynolds – second victim of the case. Joyce's younger brother. Attended the Halloween party, and later found to be blackmailing the killer.
  • Rowena Drake – Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe's niece. A widow following the death of her husband Hugo, also her first cousin, from unknown causes. Organiser of the Halloween party that Joyce attended.
  • Miranda Butler – a twelve-year-old girl who was ill and unable to attend the party. Best friends of Joyce, both of whom are students at the local school.
  • 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. Noted for being unusually beautiful and fascinated with beauty.
  • Elizabeth Whittaker – a teacher of mathematics and Latin at The Elms school. Attended the Halloween party, and was an associate of Janet White.
  • 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. Was a part of the game where the girls see the faces of their future husbands.
  • Desmond Holland – a 16-year-old, who attended the party. Was part of the game where the girls see the faces of their future husbands.
  • Harriet Leaman – Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe's former cleaner.
  • George – Poirot's faithful valet.
  • Superintendent Spence – a retired police officer. Assists Poirot by supplying a list of deaths with a connection to Joyce's declaration.
  • 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."[4]

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."[5]

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."[6]

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,[7] 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.[8][9]
  • 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, ISBN 0-7089-1666-X
  • 2009, HarperCollins; Facsimile edition, Hardcover: 256 pages, ISBN 978-0-00-731462-1

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.[10]

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" (ISBN 0-00-728054-8).

Film

The novel was adapted by Kenneth Branagh in 2023 for his third Poirot film,[11] 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).[12]

References
  1. Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Collins Crime Club – A checklist of First Editions. Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (p. 15)
  2. John Cooper and B.A. Pyke. Detective Fiction – the collector's guide: Second Edition (pp. 82, 87) Scholar Press. 1994. ISBN 0-85967-991-8
  3. American Tribute to Agatha Christie
  4. "How Christie Wrote".
  5. Toronto Daily Star, 13 December 1969 (p. 58)
  6. Barnard, Robert. A Talent to Deceive – an appreciation of Agatha Christie – Revised edition (p. 194). Fontana Books, 1990. ISBN 0-00-637474-3
  7. Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World. HarperCollins. 12 November 2020.
  8. Bunson, Matthew (2000). The Complete Christie: An Agatha Christie Encyclopedia. Simon & Schuster. p. 69. ISBN 978-0671028312.
  9. Lee, Amy (7 February 2003). Agatha Christie: Hallowe'en Party. The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
  10. "Hallowe'en Party". BBC Genome. 30 October 1993. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  11. Massoto, Erick (3 March 2022). "A Third Hercule Poirot Film Has Been Written, Says 20th Century Studios President". Collider. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  12. "Kenneth Branagh's Third Hercule Poirot Film 'A Haunting in Venice' Casts Tina Fey, Jamie Dornan, Michelle Yeoh and More". Variety. 10 October 2022.
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