Classic mystery

Elephants Can Remember

by Agatha Christie

Book 35 of the Hercule Poirot series

At a literary luncheon, Ariadne Oliver is asked whether her goddaughter's mother murdered her father or the father murdered the mother years earlier. The celebrated deaths were ruled a double suicide or murder-suicide, but the surviving daughter's engagement renews pressure for certainty. Poirot and Oliver seek people whose long memories preserve fragments of the couple's marriage, family, and final day. Reflective and melancholy, this late mystery suits readers who enjoy cold cases, oral testimony, family resemblance, and detectives sorting durable observation from the distortions that accumulate when witnesses have remembered a tragedy for decades.