Sometimes, I pick up a book because it has an amazing tagline or introduction, but I soon find that the author has failed to deliver on the potential of his or her plot premise.

For Agatha Christie’s novels, on the other hand, I find that the opposite is what tends to be true.  Take this mystery, for instance.  This is a Miss Marple story, and already I’m less than interested – it’s tough for me to see eye to eye with an elderly woman who has never even left her village, and tends to rely mostly on gossip to solve her murders.  And in this story, obviously written later in Christie’s career, Marple is getting up in years, to the point where she is nearly house-ridden, and must rely on a nurse for much help.

If that was all I knew about this story, I would have put it down.

But I kept reading – and I’m glad that I did.
Although the story begins with the elderly and confined Marple, we soon leave her behind as we follow an older, but still beautiful, actress.  She has just moved into the large mansion in the town, and throws a party – where one of the guests winds up poisoned!