The illustrious career of Hercule Poirot begins with this tale of intrigue. Poirot, a master of inquiry, is called in to investigate the sudden death of elderly Emily Inglethorp at Styles Court in the village of Styles-Saint-Mary in Essex. She has just married for a second time, and Alfred Inglethorp (a former secretary and 20 years younger than Emily) is the new husband. There are many people in residence at Styles at the time of death who can

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A Study in Scarlet was flung like a bombshell into the field of detective fiction. Join Dr. Watson as he first meets the brooding Holmes and as they locate their now famous apartment at 221B Baker Street in the midst of a case that spans two continents.

Anthony Horowitz tells ex-detective Daniel Hawthorne that after three books, he's ending their collaboration. His new play, a thriller called Mindgame, is about to open in London's West End. The play is panned by critics-- Sunday Times critic Harriet Throsby is particularly savage, especially about the writing. The next day she is stabbed in the heart by an ornamental dagger-- one belonging to Anthony, and with his fingerprints all over it. When a...

"Hercule Poirot rushes to France in response to an urgent and cryptic plea from a client. But the Belgian detective arrives just too late: the man who had summoned him is found dead on a golf course, stabbed in the back with a letter opener and wearing an ill-fitting coat with a mysterious love letter in its pocket. Strange circumstances multiply, culminating in the discovery of a second body stabbed with the same murder weapon. While the local authorities...

Hercule Poirot is summoned to solve a case involving the murder of a seductive woman accompanying a scientific party investigating the secrets of ancient Babylon.

"When Cora Lansquenet is savagely murdered with a hatchet, the extraordinary remark she made the previous day at her brother Richard's funeral suddenly takes on a chilling significance. At the reading of Richard's will, Cora was clearly heard to say, 'It's been hushed up very nicely, hasn't it ... But he was murdered, wasn't he?' In desperation, the family solicitor turns to Hercule Poirot to unravel the mystery"--Page 4 of cover.

In Mrs. McGinty's Dead, one of Agatha Christie's most ingenious mysteries, the intrepid Hercule Poirot must look into the case of a brutally murdered landlady.

Mrs. McGinty died from a brutal blow to the back of her head. Suspicion falls immediately on her shifty lodger, James Bentley, whose clothes reveal traces of the victim's blood and hair. Yet something is amiss: Bentley just doesn't seem like a murderer.

Could

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When Gordon Cloade is killed in the London blitz a few weeks after getting married, his new bride is suddenly in sole possession of the family fortune. Other family members, though, have suspicions about his demise, especially when "spirits" claim the widow's first husband is still alive.

Eliza Scarlet joins forces with a Scotland Yard inspector to solve crime in nineteenth century London.

The third installment of Dorothy L. Sayers's famous Harriet Vane mysteries, unfolds at the all female Shrewsbury College at Oxford. Upon returning to Oxford for the first time in years for a school reunion, Harriet Vane is asked by her old professors to turn her talents as a detective writer to practical use. Someone is terrorizing the faculty and students of the college by sending vicious anonymous letters, eventually leading to the destruction of...