More often than not, when characters in a Christie novel refer to previous events which are irrelevant to the plot it will be found that the reference is to an earlier novel. As we have seen, such references can sometimes be irritatingly indiscreet. But, in Dead Man’s Folly, when Poirot claims to remember the local police investigator, Inspector Bland, from fifteen years ago when Bland was a young Sergeant, he appears to be recalling a case which has not been recorded. The reader has not previously met Inspector Bland.

Dead Man’s Folly is a good, average, traditional Poirot novel, entertaining though not outstanding. The colourful Ariadne Oliver, Mrs Christie’s good-natured parody of herself and her writing habits, plays a leading part: the story would lack flavour without her. Mrs Oliver’s appearances in Christie novels, mostly those also involving Poirot, will become increasingly frequent in future years, and always to splendid effect.

At the end of Dead Man’s Folly, Poirot announces his solution and identifies the murderer, but the novel ends before the person in question is apprehended by the police. In fact, it is not absolutely certain that an arrest will take place, for Poirot’s brilliant guesses are not always supported by the kind of evidence that would stand up in a court of law. Often, he has to trick his criminal into confession or collapse. Here, the question is left open. The feeling, however, is that the killer, ‘ruthless…without pity…and without conscience’ as described by a close relative, will not get away with it.

Some critics of this novel have failed to be convinced by the author that an army deserter could return to his local village disguised only by a beard and a change of name, and not be recognized. They have a point.

A TV movie of Dead Man’s Folly was made in 1986, with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot.

About Charles Osborne

This essay was adapted from Charles Osborne’s The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie: A Biographical Companion to the Works of Agatha Christie (1982, rev. 1999). Mr. Osborne was born in Brisbane in 1927. He is known internationally as an authority on opera, and has written a number of books on musical and literary subjects, among them The Complete Operas of Verdi (1969); Wagner and His World (1977); and W.H. Auden: The Life of a Poet (1980). An addict of crime fiction and the world’s leading authority on Agatha Christie, Charles Osborne adapted the Christie plays Black Coffee (Poirot); Spider’s Web; and The Unexpected Guest into novels. He lives in London.

9 France and Britain had begun to bomb Cairo and the Suez Canal area on 31 October. By 20 November, a United Nations emergency force was supervising a cease-fire.

10 See the photograph of the boathouse at Greenway House, between pp. 120–121.

About Agatha Christie

About Agatha Christie