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This novel is set at a student hostel. Poirot is initially asked to investigate petty thefts and vandalism in the hostel, and easily discovers that most of these acts were committed by resident Celia Austin. Then Celia is murdered. When Poirot outlines to Nigel's father's solicitor the case against Nigel, the solicitor provides final proof. Nigel's mother had been poisoned, not by his father, but by Nigel. When the father discovered this (medinal is a poison slow to act, and the mother had occasion to explain the method of her imminent death) he forced him to write a confession and left it with his solicitor together with a letter explaining that it should be presented to the authorities in case of any further wrongdoing by Nigel. Valerie confirms Poirot's solution further. She placed the call to the police station, which had apparently come from Patricia, to establish an alibi for Nigel who had already bludgeoned Patricia. The green ink was a double-bluff intended to divert suspicion away from him. Valerie is willing to incriminate Nigel fully because Mrs Nicoletis was actually her mother.

Residents of a student hostel are puzzled by the meaning of a series of senseless and seemingly unrelated thefts of no particular value or obvious intent. But Hercule, with a carefully considered application of the “little gray cells”, of course, is worried that it may be otherwise. Then an apparent suicide from an overdose of morphia and a subsequent murder make it obvious that the problem is much more than the work of a mean-spirited prankster. Before long, Poirot’s mental sleuthing leads him beyond the group of young students and into the sinister world of international drug smuggling. Hungarian: Gyilkosság a diákszállóban (Murder in the Dormitory) – for the Poirot film: A kisegér mindent lát (The Little Mouse Can See Everything) The youngest of three children of the Miller family. The Millers had two other children: Margaret Frary Miller (1879–1950), called Madge, who was eleven years Agatha's senior, and Louis Montant Miller (1880–1929), called Monty, ten years older than Agatha.

A bunch of boarders, mostly students and young folk, get into a bit of mischief which turns out to be more than just a bit of mischief. Again Poirot shows how clever he is, this time because his perfect secretary starts getting typing errors. It's amusing how he is half in awe of her, half in fear of her. Set in a hostel with a mixed group, this intriguing story wasn't like other mysteries by her that I've read. He's called in because of a bizarre list of items stolen, but murder comes across eventually. The Sittaford Mystery - Why Didn't They Ask Evans? - And Then There Were None - Death Comes as the End - Sparkling Cyanide - Crooked House - They Came to Baghdad - Destination Unknown - The Pale Horse - Endless Night - Passenger to Frankfurt The novel was also adapted as a 2015 episode of the French television series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie. This adaptation differed from Christie's novel in that Sharpe is replaced with the recurring character of Inspector Japp, and a number of the students from the novel are left out, most notably Akibombo, Elizabeth Johnston, and Lal, who are students but neither English nor American. Other aspects omitted from the TV adaptation include the red herring of the green ink, the change of the motive for the murder of Celia, the theft of the poison being the only thing taken and the person who takes it (McNabb) and the smuggling involving only diamonds, the inclusion of a Custom and Excise Officer conducting an undercover operation, and the relationship between Valerie and Mrs Nicoletis. [ citation needed] French

Pretty soon several people connected to the boarding house are dead and residents' dark secrets start to come to light. John Bull serialised in six abridged instalments from May 28 (Volume 97, Number 2552) to July 2, 1955 (Volume 98, Number 2557) with illustrations by "Fancett". [1] Agatha Christie also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, and was occasionally published under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan. Patricia Lane comes to Nigel and admits that she has taken the morphine from the bottle in his drawer and substituted for it bicarbonate of soda. Now the bottle of bicarbonate of soda has been taken from her own drawer. While they are searching for this bottle she mentions that she is intending to write to his father to reconcile the two. Nigel tells her that the reason for his estrangement from his father is that he discovered that his father had poisoned his mother with Medinal, a trade name for barbitone sodium. This is why he changed his name and carries two passports. Nigel goes to Inspector Sharpe and tells him about the missing morphine, but while he is there, Patricia telephones to say that she has discovered something further. By the time that Nigel and Sharpe get to the house, she is dead, killed by a blow to the head. Akibombo comes to Sharpe and says that he had taken Patricia's bicarbonate to ease a stomach complaint; when he took a teaspoonful of the bicarbonate, however, he had stomach pains and later discovered that the white powder was in fact the boracic powder. By the time Patricia had substituted the bicarbonate, the morphine had already been substituted by the stolen boracic powder. Poirot's suspicions about Valerie Hobhouse's role in the smuggling operation are proved correct by a police raid on her beauty shop.When Poirot threatens to call in the cops a young woman, Celia Austin, confesses to some of the small thefts but claims innocence of the other incidents. The Secret of Chimneys - The Seven Dials Mystery - Cards on the Table - Murder is Easy - Towards Zero M. Poirot becomes suspicious when Ms Lemon makes a number of mistakes in a letter she has typed for him, why, how can this be, the reliable unfazed Ms Lemon in error, mais non. It transpires her sister returned from Singapore a widow, and having to take a job as a housekeeper of student accommodation has been having some problems. Poirot intrigued listens to Ms Lemon's story of her sister and then invites the sister to tea to learn more. A large house lived in by a number of students of varying nationalities has been experiencing some strange robberies and vandalisms, what connects these strange thefts, Poirot is determined to find out tuit de suite.

This best-selling author of all time wrote 66 crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and six novels under a pseudonym in romance. Her books sold more than a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation. According to Index Translationum, people translated her works into 103 languages at least, the most for an individual author. Of the most enduring figures in crime literature, she created Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. She atuhored The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of modern theater.

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An intriguing beginning gone awry and a clever plot defiled by implausible events is all I could say about this novel of the Poirot series. The idea of a possible kleptomaniac in a student hostel sounds interesting, isn't it? Yes, it is. And this original theme attracted me very much to the story. It started well, I must say, with the problem being brought to the notice of our dear Poirot by his secretary Miss Lemon and Poirot assisting Miss Lemon's sister, Mrs. Hubbard, the warden of the hostel. But when the disappearance of items comes to an end with the confession of the "false" kleptomaniac, and in its stead murder takes place and the whole plot is changed, the story begins to go downhill with the monotony of the criminal investigation.

Inspector Sharpe solves the mystery of the stolen stethoscope during his interviews with the inhabitants of the hostel. Nigel Chapman admits to having stolen the stethoscope to pose as a doctor and steal some morphine tartrate from the hospital dispensary as part of a bet to acquire three deadly poisons (the other two being digitalin and hyoscine). He claims the poisons were carefully disposed of, but cannot be sure that the morphine was not stolen from him while it was in his possession. Poirot turns his attention to the reappearance of the diamond ring, and confronts Valerie Hobhouse, in whose soup the ring was found. It seems that the diamond had been replaced with a zircon and that only Valerie could place it in the dish of soup; Poirot accuses her of having stolen the diamond. She admits to having done so, saying that she needed the money to pay off gambling debts. She also admits to having planted in Celia Austin's mind the idea of the thefts.

In 1930, Christie married archaeologist Max Mallowan (Sir Max from 1968) after joining him in an archaeological dig. Their marriage was especially happy in the early years and remained so until Christie's death in 1976. In the UK the novel was first serialised in the weekly magazine John Bull in six abridged instalments from 28 May (Volume 97, Number 2552) to 2 July 1955 (Volume 98, Number 2557) with illustrations by "Fancett". [6] First off I do understand the criticism aimed at this book. There are too many characters for such a short book and as such hardly any of them are fleshed out. Also Poirot plays a relatively minor role and a lot of the interrogations are actually carried out by his inspector friend (although it is Poirot who finally pieces everything together). When the students are attempting to place Hercule Poirot, during Chapter 4, one of them mentions the case retold in Mrs McGinty's Dead (1952). When Poirot comes to lecture to the students about his cases in the same chapter, he retells the story of The Nemean Lion, published in book form in The Labours of Hercules (1947). In chapter 5 Poirot also remembers Count Vera Rossakoff's "exotic splendour...even in decay", something that he has only observed in The Capture of Cerberus, also from The Labours of Hercules. In Chapter 21, Poirot visits a solicitor by the name of Mr Endicott to confirm his suspicions of Nigel Chapman. Endicott says to Poirot, "...I'm deeply in your debt. You cleared up that nasty Abernethy business for me." This may be a reference to the events in After the Funeral (1953), though Abernethie is mistakenly spelt "Abernethy" and not "Abernethie" as it is in After the Funeral. Furthermore, the catalyst to Poirot's direct involvement to the events in After the Funeral is a solicitor named Entwhistle, not Endicott. The opinionated statements by Christie about the suspects and her constant defense as to the innocence of one suspect was a bit tiresome and this deliberate attempt at misleading the readers was not too pleasing. Poirot's ingeniousness was in its best element, and he solves the mystery which was baffling to both the police and the readers. But even with Poirot, certain inferences that he made sounded too fantastic. For example, his knowledge of the contents of a certain letter by a dying man to his solicitor, the true relationship between two characters, came out of the blue without any previous hint as to how Poirot could draw such a conclusion. Also, the student characters were so stereotyped which made them uninteresting.