‘Oh wait, Mother, wait, I’m telling Daddy’s fortune. Just the last card, Daddy – the most important of all.’ …

Sparkling cyanide: a simple cocktail. Champagne, a good House from a good year, such as Cliquot 1928. Add a little potassium cyanide, just enough for a sip or two to be fatal. …

‘And what are men anyway? They are necessary to breed children, that is all. But the strength of the race is in women. It is we, Renisenb, who hand down to our children…

’I like a good detective story but they begin in the wrong place! They begin with the murder. But the murder is the end. The story begins long before that - years before…

Caroline Crale died in prison, convicted of the murder of her husband, Amyas. Fifteen years later, Poirot is set the impossible task of proving her innocence by reviving memories of things past.

Miss Marple believes the apparent suicide was murder. To catch the murderer she proposes to set a trap …

‘Our new schoolmistress went to wind up the clock and a frog jumped out’ says Miss Marple in explanation of why Ruby Keene’s body is in Colonel Bantry’s library …

‘How well do you know Bletchley?’ This phrase in a book written in 1939 about spies, code-cracking and fifth columnists got Christie and Professor Sir Dilly Knox, at Bletchley Park, into hot water…

When Arlena Marshall arrives on the island even Hercule Poirot appreciates her beauty. When tragedy strikes, however, Poirot cannot let his emotions cloud his intellect. He must suspect everyone.

It was like a kaleidoscope – shoe buckles, 10-inch stockings, a damaged face .. settled themselves down into a coherent pattern. For the first time, Hercule Poirot was looking at the case the…