Christie, Agatha -- Problem at Pollensa Bay (1991)

Blurb: Agatha Christie’s novels and short stories have brought pleasure to millions.  Now HarperCollins presents a newly available volume of eight stories collected together for the first time including four stories never before published in the UK, Australia or South Africa in book form.

Many of Christie’s most famous characters are here, including the redoubtable Hercule Poirot, who makes his appearance in Yellow Iris, when an anonymous telephone call summons him to a supper party at a fashionable restaurant.  Is it merely coincidence that exactly four years ago at the very same table the guests gathered there witnessed the strange and tragic suicide of the host’s wife?

Parker Pyne, that well-known ‘specialist in unhappiness’, resolves a difficult matter of the heart with charm and compelling ingenuity in Problem at Pollensa Bay.  In The Regatta Mystery he turns his remarkable powers of observation to a puzzling matter.  During a glamorous yachting party hosted by Mr. Isaac Pointz, one of the guests at the lunch table takes the light-hearted challenge to steal his precious diamond, the Morning Star, very seriously indeed.  The stone disappears without trace, yet none of the guests has left the room…

In The Harlequin Tea Set, Mr. Satterthwaite’s chance meeting with that most enigmatic of men, Harley Quin, turns a peaceful country weekend into a chance to prevent a bizarre and colourful tea-time murder.

For all those readers for whom Agatha Christie is the undisputed Queen of Crime, these and the other stories that make up this immensely enjoyable collection will be an important and welcome addition to the Christie canon.