Book of the Month with Lucinda

Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, looking like “some monstrous swollen Buddha”, sat Mrs Boynton. A few hours ago, she had been her usual bullying self, yet now she was motionless, never to bully anyone again. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist was the only sign of the fatal injection that had killed her.

Hercule Poirot, fortuitously travelling in the Middle East, is asked to assist but is given only 24 hours in which to solve the case. He had seen the victim and her family in Jerusalem, where he had overheard a chance remark made by one of Mrs Boynton’s children to an unknown interlocutor ‘You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?’ Was it matricide? Or was the poisoner yet another person with a reason to hate the matriarch? Mrs Boynton was the most detestable woman Poirot had ever met – and he was not alone in his dislike of her…. 

As we bring our Agatha Christie month to an end, join Lucinda Hawksley to chat about one of Christie’s most iconic works – and to talk about all things Agatha Christie and events you’ve enjoyed this month.