Category: Mystery
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN-13: 9780425129630
Series: Hercule Poirot
Pub. Date: November 1991 (Reprint)
Date Read: October 2008
"Poirot consulted his watch - he was to meet Mrs. Oliver in exactly ten minutes' time outside a house called Apple Trees. Really, the names seemed uncannily appropriate. 'Really,' thought Poirot, 'one didn't seem able to get away from apples.' Nothing could be more agreeable than a juicy English apple - And yet here were apples mixed up with broomsticks, and witches, and old-fashioned folklore, and a murdered child."
The novel opens with the preparations for a Halloween party underway. There will be bobbing for apples, a broomstick competition and of course some dancing for all the young adults that are coming to the party.
Everyone seems to be having a good time until Joyce Reynolds, a young girl, ends up drowned. Someone shoved her head in the apple bucket but none of the adults and teens at the party can imagine why anyone would do that. Certainly it must have been some vagrant coming in to do such a thing but Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, a mystery writer, thinks there's more to it than that. Joyce told her she had witnessed a murder so what if that's what got her killed? Mrs. Oliver calls on Hercule Poirot for his expertise and so the investigation begins.
Poirot takes the reader thorough the picturesque village of Woodleigh Common as he makes his investigations. But what he finds are little clues to the present murder and a lot of signs to past mischief. As he says, the past is the father of the present.
I was quite surprised by the crimes because the setting seems so idyllic and yet here are crimes against children. And, more so I think it was interesting that the children are presented as not very likable characters either.
While I found the pacing to be a bit slow in the middle of the book I couldn't help but enjoy Hercule Poirot and especially Mrs. Oliver. I especially enjoyed the ending and how everything is explained and not rushed through.