The Hunter's Lodge Case

Hercule Poirot is flat on his back with influenza when a desperate plea arrives from Derbyshire. Roger Havering's uncle, wealthy American businessman Harrington Pace, has been shot dead at his isolated hunting lodge, and the local police have arrested the wrong man. Never one to let injustice fester, Poirot dispatches his loyal friend Arthur Hastings to do the legwork while he solves the case from his sickbed, deductions flying back to England via telegram and letters. What follows is a deliciously elegant display of the little grey cells at work: Hastings gathers the suspects, the alibis, the inconsistencies, while Poirot sits in London, wrapped in blankets, seeing what no one else can see. The result is one of Christie's most delightfully unconventional puzzles, a murder mystery that plays out in two locations at once, between the foggy English countryside and the cramped bedroom of an ailing genius.