Book description
There's more than petty theft going on in a London youth hostel…
An outbreak of kleptomania at a student hostel was not normally the
sort of crime that aroused Hercule Poirot's interest. But when he saw
the list of stolen and vandalized items - including a stethoscope, some
old flannel trousers, a box of chocolates, a slashed rucksack and a
diamond ring found in a bowl of soup - he congratulated the warden, Mrs
Hubbard, on a 'unique and beautiful problem'.
The list made absolutely no sense at all. But, reasoned Poirot, if this
was merely a petty thief at work, why was everyone at the hostel so
frightened? 'Poirot's return to the happy hunting grounds of detective
fiction is something of an event… The thumbnail sketches of the
characters are as good as ever and in spite of the over-elaborate nature
of the puzzle there is plenty of entertainment.' Times Literary Supplement
'The Christie fan of longest standing, who thinks he knows every one of
her tricks, will still be surprised by some of the twists here.' New
York Times Agatha Christie was born in Torquay in 1890 and became,
quite simply, the best-selling novelist in history. Her first novel, The
Mysterious Affair at Styles, written towards the end of the First World
War, introduced us to Hercule Poirot, who was to become the most popular
detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. She is known
throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a
billion copies in the English language and another billion in over 100
foreign languages. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story
collections, 19 plays, and six novels under the name of Mary Westmacott.
