Agatha Christie - Hallowe'en Party - UK First Edition (1969)

CHRISTIE, Agatha
Hallowe'en Party

London : Collins, The Crime Club, 1969. First edition (preceding the Dodd, Mead U.S. edition of the same year).

Octavo (21 x 14cm) original red cloth boards, spine lettered in gilt, with the Crime Club "man with pistol" device gilt-stamped at the foot; in the original pictorial dust jacket; pp. 255; dedicated by Christie "To P. G. Wodehouse."

The first edition of this later Hercule Poirot mystery, in which Poirot is summoned by his friend the detective novelist Ariadne Oliver after a Hallowe'en party for local children ends in tragedy with a girl drowned in an apple-bobbing tub, having earlier boasted of once having witnessed a murder. Poirot's investigation into the sleepy respectability of Woodleigh Common uncovers a decades-old crime beneath its surface. Christie's dedication to Wodehouse, made not long before his knighthood, reflects the long mutual admiration between the two writers.

Boards square, gilt spine bright, corners lightly bumped with slight bruising to the head and foot of the spine; no foxing to the text block or page edges, internally clean throughout. Dust jacket unclipped, with a small later bookseller's label to the front flap; some bends and creases to the covers as illustrated, a 1.5-inch closed tear (held, not detached), and foxing to the interior of the jacket, only mildly visible from the exterior. Priced accordingly.

A good, honest copy of a scarcer later Poirot title in its correct first-edition jacket.