Three Act Tragedy (1935)
(in America as Murder in Three Acts)
Blurb:
My review:
One of the poorest entries in the Poirot series until the very late ones. Although the characters are as amusing as Anthony Berkeley at his most cynical, the book demonstrates an occasional flaw of Christie's: her desire to bamboozle the reader leads her to discard probability and possibility, to neglect the human side of the equation, and to produce a solution which, although surprising, is nevetheless unconvincing. This tale offers an utterly foolish murderer who commits three crimes, two of which are wholly superfluous, tripling the risk of detection to no benefit. Poirot only begins to function on p. 117, and reasons from a clue which is not presented to the reader!
The book's principal merit is that the reader does not have to put up with Sir Peter Ustinov's over-acting and a horde of bad actors in Mexico.