This echoes some modernist literary anxieties surrounding the rise of the machine and the fear of humanity becoming mechanised and losing personal differences. They are just – bodies!’ Furthermore, this lack of individuality when it comes to sunbathing is captured in an almost modernist comment when he opines that: ‘today everything is standardised’. What are they? They are not men and women. Unlike some of the later Poirot mysteries, our favourite Belgian sleuth is introduced very early in this novel, and he has much to say about sunbathers: ‘Regard them there, lying out in rows. The 1930s in particular saw a shift in this area due to the 1938 Holiday with Pay Act. This setting arguably ties into the later drugs trafficking subplot, but I felt the exposition also tapped into the changing times when it came to holidaymaking in the UK. This introduction also explains how the Jolly Roger Hotel came into being.

It is said to have been based on Burgh Island, near Devon. Interestingly though in Evil Under the Sun she begins more unusually (although it is not unheard of for her) with the history of her geographical setting, e.g., the fictional Smugglers Island near Leathercombe Bay off the south-east coast of England. Often Christie opens her stories with characters mid conversation, or she has a series of small vignettes which introduce you to all the main characters. They all had a reason to kill Arlena Stuart. On this luxury retreat, cut off from the outside world, everyone is a suspect. And in less than 72 hours she will be dead.

‘The moment Arlena Stuart steps through the door, every eye in the resort is on her.

Murder under the sun