The second in Christie’s Hercule Poirot series—and only her second novel—definitely shows the potential of a future master mystery writer, but she’s not there yet. The book is marred by much more “telling” than “showing,” and the story is unbelievably twisty, with secret pasts, duplicate weapons, and even twin acrobats. A side story has Poirot pitting his “little gray cells” against Detective Giraud’s scientific investigation just coming into fashion in the 1920s. I was also a bit disappointed that Christie made no use whatsoever of the sport of golf that was becoming to popular in the 1920s. Nevertheless, it is fun to see one of Poirot’s earliest cases and to get an early taste of his philosophy about love, family, and truth-telling.