Dead Man's Folly by Agatha Christie First Edition The Crime Club Collins 1956. No previous owner's marks or inscriptions and no foxing to contents or edges. Covers VG.

At a lavish country estate in Devon, Hercule Poirot is invited by mystery writer Ariadne Oliver to stage a mock murder hunt for a village fete. But the game turns deadly when the designated "victim," a young girl, is found strangled in the boathouse. Amid manicured lawns, eccentric guests, and a crumbling folly, Poirot sifts through alibis involving a secretive heiress, a philandering architect, and a shifty butler. Christie’s 1956 novel sparkles with intricate plotting, psychological nuance, and Poirot’s meticulous brilliance, unraveling a web of jealousy and deception in a quintessentially English setting of summer fetes and sinister secrets.

Dead Man's Folly enchants collectors as a sparkling gem in Christie’s Poirot canon, its meta-murder conceit a delightful twist in her Golden Age mastery. Readers revel in its bucolic intrigue and Poirot’s cerebral finesse, akin to Ngaio Marsh’s theatrical whodunits or Margery Allingham’s rural riddles. Its cultural charm captures 1950s English pastoral life and class tensions, beguiling cozy mystery fans. Collectors prize its prominence in Christie’s oeuvre, while readers wander the estate’s tangled clues and fete-fueled suspense, deeming it a classic essential for aficionados of intricate plots and Poirot’s timeless detective flair.