Mrs. McGinty's Dead is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1952 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on March 3 of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.50 and the UK edition nine shillings and sixpence (9/6) The Detective Book Club issued an edition, also in 1952, as Blood Will Tell.
The novel features the characters Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver. The story is a “village mystery”, a sub-genre of whodunit which Christie usually reserved for Miss Marple. The novel is notable for its wit and comic detail, something that had been little in evidence in the Poirot novels of the thirties and forties. Poirot's misery in the run-down guesthouse, and Mrs. Oliver's observations on the life of a detective novelist, provide considerable entertainment in the early part of the novel.
The publication of Mrs. McGinty’s Dead may be considered as marking the start of Poirot's final phase, in which Ariadne Oliver plays a large part. Although she had appeared in Cards on the Table in 1936, Mrs. Oliver's most significant appearances in Christie's work begin here. She appears in five of the last nine Christie novels featuring Poirot to be written, and appears on her own without Poirot at all in The Pale Horse (1961).
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