Problem at Pollensa Bay

Eight short stories gathered into a single British volume in 1991, fifteen years after Agatha Christie's death, draw together pieces that had appeared in magazines and earlier American collections but never before in a UK book. The tales share out among Christie's lighter recurring sleuths: the title story and another seaside puzzle hand their problems to Mr Parker Pyne, the genial arranger of human happiness, who is consulted on holiday over a son's unwelcome engagement and a wager about a stolen diamond. Hercule Poirot appears in two pieces, including a locked-room death and a nightclub gathering where the guests are all bound to an old, unsolved murder. Mr Harley Quin and his friend Mr Satterthwaite carry two stories, among them a late tale in which a chance meeting in a café leaves Satterthwaite with a single cryptic word that may matter when violence threatens. The collection closes with two pieces that sit outside the detective form, leaning instead toward romance and the gothic. The settings range from Majorca and English country houses to a London nightclub, and the tone stays closer to the puzzle and the diversion than to the grim. Because the stories span much of Christie's career, the book offers a compact tour of her shorter work and of the supporting detectives who never headlined a novel, presented in the order chosen by her British publisher rather than by date of writing.