Books in Mystery Masters series

Mustachioed sleuth Hercule Poirot receives a letter challenging him to solve a murder that has yet to be committed. The clues? A date and a location, and the signature A.B.C. Soon Alice Ascher is killed in Andover, an open A.B.C. railway guide near her body. Next it's Betty Barnard, strangled in Bexhill. Can Poirot find the serial killer before he — or she — goes through the entire alphabet?

In a sprawling mansion in affluent Swinly Dean, Aristide Leonides lies dead from barbiturate poisoning. An accident? Not likely. In fact, suspicion has already fallen on his luscious widow, a cunning, much-younger beauty rumored to have been engaged in an illicit affair. But criminologist Charles Hayward, who’s in love with the dead man’s granddaughter Sophia, has his suspicions about the whole unsavory Leonides clan. Can he solve the puzzle without implicating Sophia? Christie considered this novel, dramatically read by Hugh Fraser, one of her best.

While organizing a murder mystery game for a village festival, an inescapable feeling of dread settles on crime novelist Adriane Oliver. In desperation, she summons her old friend Hercule Poirot. Her instincts are proved correct when the “pretend” victim is discovered with an all-too-real rope wrapped around her neck. The two sleuths soon discover that in murder hunts, whether mock or real, everyone is playing a part.