Poirot comes out of retirement when his industrialist friend is brutally murdered a short while after a local widow who was suspected of killing her husband commits suicide.
A beautiful actress becomes the prime suspect in the murder of her tyrannical husband - except that she has a cast-iron alibi for the night of the crime.
Poirot's rehabilitative health retreat on an island resort becomes an even more stimulating mental exercise when a flirtatious film star is found strangled on a nearby beach.
While Poirot is on holiday in Iraq, the wife of the head scientist at an archaeological dig confides to him that she is the target of threatening letters.