Author Ariadne Oliver is invited to her friend’s house, where preparations for celebrating Halloween—a fun carnival for children and adults—are in full swing. One of the guests is a teenage girl known for her love of telling wild stories about all sorts of mysteries. And now she shocks the audience with a story that she once saw a real murder! No one believed her. And then, on the very same evening, she was found… drowned in a bucket of water with apples! Terribly strange. Who needed the death of the girl? Maybe she really witnessed something dangerous for someone at the party?
In any case, Hercule Poirot—who agreed to help Mrs. Oliver, his old acquaintance—faces a difficult task: to pull the carnival mask off the murderer and show society his face… This dark, ominous book was dedicated to Agatha Christie’s well-known British humorist, the author of stories about Jeeves and Wooster, P. G. Wodehouse. In particular, the dedication included thanks for the fact that “he was so kind in saying he likes my books.”