Bundle: "I say Jimmy, shall we go sculling with 37 of our closest friends?" --------- Jimmy: "I daresay Bundle, I'd rather be drawn into some international intrigue for the weekend, at our country house."<br /><br />Pre-war Agatha Christie mysteries are an odd dish. Much like the English Patient, they're thinly-veiled envy-pieces in which readers wish they were as glamorous as the gentry. In this case, it's not sufficient that the protagonists be wealthy, landed, titled and surrounded by boatloads of friends, they also need to find themselves at the center of an international cabal (w/o even getting out of bed), who wear clock-face masks, and generally behave like superheros on behalf of Dear Old Britain. It's like a James Bond family reunion.<br /><br />This yarn leaps from the quaint to the absurd, to the improbable, to the over-extended, finally jumping firmly outside the genre boundaries of 'whodunit.' When the over-scaled conclusion finally arrives, somehow it manages to still be unsatisfying and trifling. Christie hasn't figured out the low-effort formula that would keep her up to her ears in cash yet. Regardless, if the plot drew any excitement, it would be fine. But she's way out of her league here and would rarely try anything this far off course again.