Secret of the Blackbirds

Actress Jane Wilkinson wants a divorce, but her husband, Lord Edgware, refuses. She convinces Hercule Poirot to use his famed tact and logic to make her case. Lord Edgware turns up murdered, a well-placed knife wound at the base of his neck. It will take the precise Poirot to sort out the lies from the alibis - and find the criminal before another victim dies.

During a murder hunt game at a country house, to which Hercule Poirot is invited as an "expert", a real murder occurs.

Faced with two false confessions and numerous suspects after a despised civil magistrate is found shot in the local vicarage, Detective Inspector Slack reluctantly accepts help from Miss Marple.

Jane Marple solves the mystery when a local woman is poisoned and a visiting movie star seems to have been the intended victim.

At the insistence of Ruth Van Rydock, an old schoolfriend who is convinced that there is something wrong, Miss Marple agrees to visit 'Stonygates', the country house of Ruth's sister.

In Acapulco, Hercule Poirot attends a dinner party in which one of the guests clutches his throat and suddenly dies. The causes seem to be natural until another party with most of the same guests produces another corpse.