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Dead Man's Folly

Dead Man's Folly

ClassicsCrime
Pages
224
Published
1956
Language
English

Synopsis

Crime novelist Ariadne Oliver has been engaged to devise a Murder Hunt, a treasure-hunt-style game, for a summer fete at Nasse House, a grand estate on the Devon coast. As preparations proceed, she grows uneasy: small details keep shifting in ways she did not intend, as though an unseen hand is steering events. Trusting her instinct that something genuinely sinister is taking shape, she telephones her old friend Hercule Poirot and asks him to come down, ostensibly to present the prizes. Poirot arrives to find a household of guests and locals each absorbed in their own concerns, and a game whose staged corpse is to be played by a teenage Girl Guide hidden in the boathouse. When the fete opens and the hunt begins, the pretend victim is discovered genuinely dead, and another person connected to the estate vanishes without trace. Poirot must untangle the careful arrangements of the game from the design of an actual killer, sifting the history of the house and its former family from the strangers now living within its walls. Working alongside Mrs Oliver and the local police, he weighs the alibis of weekend visitors, estate staff, and villagers, testing which coincidences are real and which were manufactured. The investigation turns on questions of who people truly are and what the land itself has long concealed, drawing on identity, inheritance, and the quiet weight of the past.

Prose complexity
4/10

Vibe

AtmosphericIntellectualTense
Secret IdentityBetrayalMystery Box

Genres

Classics Crime Mystery Graphic Novels Historical Fiction Romance

About the author

A
Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976) is the best-selling novelist of all time and the writer the world calls the "Queen of Crime." Born Agatha Miller in Torquay, Devon, she came to fiction on a dare: her sister Madge bet she could not write a convincing detective story, and the result, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, introduced the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Her dispensing work in a hospital pharmacy during the First World War, repeated again during the Second, gave her the expert knowledge...

Characters

Hercule PoirotSupporting

Methodical and observant, he insists on understanding the people and the place before drawing conclusions.

Ariadne OliverSupporting

Her intuition that the game has been subtly altered drives her to call Poirot.

Sir George StubbsSupporting

A newcomer to the estate whose origins and manner invite quiet scrutiny.

Lady Hattie StubbsSupporting

Often appears childlike and vague, though glimpses suggest a sharper mind beneath.

Marlene TuckerSupporting

Hidden in the boathouse to play dead, she becomes the real victim.

All characters in Dead Man's Folly

Frequently asked questions

  • Is Dead Man's Folly part of a series?

    This novel features Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver, both recurring characters in Agatha Christie's works. While it can be read as a standalone mystery, it is one of many books where these characters collaborate.

  • Are there any adaptations of Dead Man's Folly?

    Dead Man's Folly was adapted for television as part of the Agatha Christie's Poirot series, starring David Suchet as Hercule Poirot. It also has a radio drama adaptation.

  • Is Nasse House based on a real place?

    Yes. The fictional Nasse House is modelled on Christie's own Devon home, Greenway House on the Greenway Estate, and the novel is filled with references to local places she knew.

  • Did this novel start out as something shorter?

    Yes. Christie first wrote it in 1954 as a novella before deciding to expand it into the full-length novel published in 1956.

  • What was the original novella called?

    The original novella was titled "Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly." Unpublished for about sixty years, it was finally released in 2013.

  • Why did Christie originally write the story?

    She wrote the original novella intending to donate the proceeds to a fund raising money for stained glass windows at her local church at Churston Ferrers. After expanding it into a novel instead, she donated a different short story to the church fund.

  • Does Ariadne Oliver appear in this book?

    Yes. The crime novelist Ariadne Oliver, a recurring Christie character, sets the story in motion by arranging the Murder Hunt game and then calling Poirot when she senses something is wrong.

  • When was the novel first published?

    It was first published in the United States in October 1956, with the UK edition following on 5 November 1956.

  • Was there a television adaptation?

    Yes. A 2013 adaptation in the ITV series Agatha Christie's Poirot starred David Suchet as Poirot and Zoe Wanamaker as Mrs Oliver, and was filmed at Greenway, the house that inspired the setting.

  • Do I need to read other Poirot books first?

    No. It works as a standalone mystery, though it is part of the long-running Hercule Poirot series.

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