Christopher Bollen

I’m a fan of Christie’s one-off adventure novels. You can feel the writer trying to stretch her legs beyond the confines of a closed-circuit who-done-it plot. This novel is packed with travel—subway, boat, train—and jumps continents—Europe, Africa—and Christie even weaves in political and social unrest. But she also is playing with narrative, using two dueling accounts to frame the plot. Finally, there was a 1989 made-for-TV movie of it starring Stephanie Zimbalist and Rue McClanahan that I’m not embarrassed to recommend watching.