This is currently my "worst ever" Christie book. Besides being amazingly racist while trying to provide comic relief, the whole set up of the action is slow and forced.

The scene is a co-ed student boarding house owned by an obvious bad-guy and run by Ms Lemon's sister, the obvious good-guy. The staff are foreigners, so while Christie makes fun of their Italian high-spirits, only native born Brits get the real action. Same for the goofily drawn foreign students.

That leaves the six or so students, all amazingly self-centered don't-want-to-get-involved, step over the dead body in the room type kids. None have any common sense. Even Poirot seems very detached; he's only in about 10% of the scenes, letting the good Inspector do most of the interviewing.

Now you don't have to read it.