Hercule Poirot goes on holiday to a smart island hotel off the Devon coast, because detectives are never allowed holidays. Arlena Marshall, glamorous, adored and thoroughly resented, sunbathes her way into the middle of everyone's marriages, and is found strangled in a quiet cove. Everyone has an alibi. Everyone has a motive. The sun shines the entire time, which Christie would like you to find sinister, and honestly, she is right.
Exhibit B: the cove, mid-morning. Note the hat. NOTE THE HAT. Poirot has noted the hat. You will understand later.
What Happens (spoilers, historic)
Arlena arrives. Every wife on the island tightens her grip on her husband. Every husband pretends not to look. Poirot looks at everyone, because that is the job.
The cove. Arlena is found strangled on the beach. Time of death becomes the whole ball game, and Christie plays it like a casino owner.
The alibi carousel. Bathers, sunhats, wristwatches, a bottle thrown from a window, someone's mid-morning swim. Every detail is a trap and half the club fell into all of them.
The solution. The killer counted on you assuming a body is who you think it is and a time is when you think it is. A tan, a hat and sheer nerve. The club gasped in four different living rooms.
Weird Things
The hotel is based on Burgh Island in Devon, a real Art Deco hotel cut off by the tide, where Christie actually wrote. You can still stay there and pretend to suspect the other guests.
Poirot claims evil is everywhere, even in sunshine, which is his way of justifying being a misery on a beach holiday.
Poirot spends part of the book scandalised by sunbathing itself. Bodies lined up on the sand like meat at a butcher's, he says. He would have hated this club's group chat.
Fully clothed at all times, Poirot remains the most powerful person on the island. A lesson in there for someone.
The Club Record
Rachel's pick, and the club's monthly reminder that the Queen of Crime does not miss. Precisely one member guessed the killer and has never once let anyone forget it. The minutes note that Kel "would have solved it by chapter four", a claim that cannot be tested and therefore, by club law, stands.