Peril at End House

Peril at End House was published first in the United States by Dodd, Mead in February 1932, and in Britain by the Collins Crime Club in March. The American edition sold for two dollars and the British one for seven shillings and sixpence.

Poirot is on holiday in Cornwall, with Hastings and Chief Inspector Japp also in the book, when he meets a young woman called Magdala Buckley, known as Nick, and is persuaded that her life is in danger. She takes him to her home, End House, where he meets the friends who make up her circle.

He sets out to protect her, and despite his care a murder is committed, which turns a holiday conversation into a full investigation. End House itself, and the friends who gather there, give Poirot a closed circle to work through, in the manner of the house-party mysteries of the period, and the book was well received when it appeared and is usually counted among the stronger of the early Poirot novels. The book is also one of the titles in which Christie uses Hastings and Japp together as a counterweight to her detective.