Peril at End House

1932 (published) ; Agatha Christie

Peril at End House is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie first published in the United States by the Dodd, Mead, and Company in February 1932 and in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club in March of the same year. The United States edition retailed at two dollars, and the United Kingdom edition at seven shillings and sixpence.

The book features Christie’s famous character Hercule Poirot, as well as Arthur Hastings and Chief Inspector Japp, and is the sixth novel featuring Poirot. Poirot and Hastings vacation in Cornwall, meeting young Magdala “Nick” Buckley and her friends. He is persuaded someone is out to kill her. They meet all of her friends at her home called End House. Although he aims to protect Nick, a murder occurs, provoking Poirot to mount a serious investigation.

The novel was well received when first published with the plot remarked as unusually ingenious and diabolically clever by reviewers. Writing in 1990 Robert Barnard found it cunning, but not one of Christie’s very best. It has been adapted to stage, radio, film, television, graphic novel, and a computer game and translated to many other languages as a book.