Mrs McGinty's Dead

Mrs McGinty's Dead

Dust-jacket illustration of the US (true first) edition, with "Mrs." not "Mrs"; see Publication history (below) for UK first edition jacket image.
Author	Agatha Christie
Cover artist	Not known
Language	English
Series	Hercule Poirot
Genre	Crime
Publisher	Dodd, Mead and Company
Publication date	February 1952
Publication place	United Kingdom United States
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	243 (first edition, hardback)
Preceded by	The Under Dog and Other Stories
Followed by	After the Funeral

Mrs McGinty's Dead is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1952^[1] and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 3 March the same year.^[2] The US edition retailed at $2.50^[1] and the UK edition at nine shillings and sixpence (9/6).^[2] The Detective Book Club issued an edition, also in 1952, as Blood Will Tell.

The novel features the characters Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver. The story is a "village mystery", a subgenre of whodunit which Christie usually reserved for Miss Marple. The novel is notable for its wit and comic detail, something that had been little in evidence in the Poirot novels of the 1930s and 1940s. Poirot's misery in the run-down guesthouse, Mrs Oliver's observations on the life of a detective novelist and her growing frustration at artistic liberties taken during adaptions of her characters into plays, provide considerable entertainment in the early part of the novel. The publication of Mrs McGinty's Dead may be considered as marking the start of Poirot's final phase, in which Ariadne Oliver plays a large part. Although she had appeared in Cards on the Table in 1936, Mrs Oliver's most significant appearances in Christie's work begin here. She appears in five of the last nine Christie novels featuring Poirot, and appears on her own without Poirot at all in The Pale Horse (1961).