Mrs McGinty's Dead by Agatha Christie first edition 1952

London: The Crime Club/Collins, 1952
 
Crown 8vo., red publisher’s boards, lettered in black along spine with publisher’s device to foot; in the original clipped pictorial dust jacket (still retaining price of 6s. net to the front flap); pp. [vi], 7-187, [v, ads.]; a very good copy, light compression to spine tips and a couple of small marks to the upper board; in the like dust jacket which is nicked and chipped to extremities, lightly sunned along backstrip, with some light scratches; some spotting to the lower panel; slightly more evident spotting to the verso; the upper panel retaining much of its original brightness. 
 
First UK edition in the seldom found dust jacket. Curiously, the first US edition appeared a month before the Collins edition was released. The novel was also published by the Detective Book Club under a different name: Blood Will Tell. 
 
Mrs. McGinty’s Dead reintroduces Poirot in this classic ‘Village Mystery’, a subgenre of the classic Whodunnit. The character of Ariadne Oliver also features - a crime fiction novelist and friend of Poirot’s, who first appeared in the 1934 mystery Parker Pyne Investigates. When the title character is killed by a blow to the back of the head, Poirot is called to take on the case - unaware that his own life may be in danger. The title itself is taken from a follow-the-leader-type Children’s game similar to the Hokey-Cokey. 
 
“Authors were shy, unsociable creatures, atoning for their lack of social aptitude by inventing their own companions and conversations”