Mrs McGinty's dead by Agatha Christie

She liked to take her titles from nursery rhymes or old child games, didn't she? Apparently this was a child game... boh.
The beginning of the book is interesting: superintendent Spence asks for Poirot's help: after Mrs McGinty was killed, he investigated and arrested James Bentley, a young man that later had his fair trial and was found guilty. Spence doesn't think he's a murderer, and doesn't want him to be hanged simply because he's so unpleasant he made a bad impression..  Poirot accepts and investigates.
He meets Ariadne Oliver, and mentions their last adventure together: Shaitana's death. I remember the film, he was played by Siddig El Fadil :-)
There are funny moments, like Poirot's stay in Mrs Summerhayes' house, where everything is a mess, doors and windows constantly open, meals burned, or dirty, or rotten, things left everywhere with no order, a real nightmare for him, he was in such pain!
I didn't like the ending, though, for the reason that there were too many tricks: things we could not know, mysteries independent from each other, little oddities never explained. This time Agatha was not as fair as usual. Since the introduction of the mystery of the four old pictures of women involved in murders and Poirot's hunt to find which one of them was here now, it has all gone down.
We meet Dr Rendell, Ariadne's favourite candidate as the murderer, and his anxious wife that will tell Poirot she knows his real reason to be there.. at the end we know that his first wife died and the second Mrs Rendell received anonymous letters saying the doctor killer her, so Ariadne was probably right, this time :-p
Mrs Wetherby is a very annoying woman, very ill she says but gossip says otherwise. Her daughter Deirdre Henderson is always worried about her and hates her stepfather, with good reason because Mr Wetherby is an insufferable man.
When Poirto asks her about a weapon, she replies calmly but never asks why: Poirot wonders about that, but there will never be an explanation: she simply didn't care?
It turns out that Miss Deirdre is the one with the money, so Mr Wetherby has to bear her presence in the house (!) and Mrs Wetherby plays the part of the poor invalid to keep her close.
Mrs Upward and her son Robin, screenplay's writer: halfway through the book we have a clue that he's adopted, but it was said he had a good strong alibi, but it turns out that he killed Mrs McGinty while 'on his way' to the radiostation, and that he killed Mrs Upward while Ariadne was outside the door waiting for him. He was actually Evelyn Hope (another name they use for both boys and girls), the son of murderer Craig and of his lover Eva Kane, probably his accomplice. He killed them to avoid his real identity being known.
Eve Carpenter is so anxious and stupid and hostile, married to a rich man recently turned politician, as the two things always go hand in hand. She was the daughter of a poor dancer, not a 'respectable' war-widow. We know this only when it's all over.
There is an attempt on Poirot's life: someone tries to push him under a train, and he's saved by a man next to him: it turns out it was Dr Rendell, and had nothing to do with his investigation on Mrs McGinty's death.
Ariadne's precence was very appreciated as usual because she's funny and she's like Agatha's counterpart. Ariadne is there because Robin is adapting one of her books for the theatre and changing practically everything. It seems to hear Christie's when Ariadne says how she doesn't know why she made her Sven Finnish or why she made him a vegetarian, and how people tell her she must love her Sven a lot while actually she sort-of hates him now, but her readers like him so she has to stick with him... I've read many times of how fed up Agatha was with Poirot :-)
In this book there are all the usual racist comments and the evil gossip of the 'respectable' people. Agatha makes her characters say: 'they believed Bentley's guilt because he was so "strange"; they mock Poirot because of his eccentric look; they think ill of him because he's a foreigner. There is the usual distrust people always have against all foreigners, in her books, which is always the same arrogance British people have to be the only civil people in the world. A thing I found curious is the post-office, where they go to buy wool, apples... it does everything, this post office...

Ita: Fermate il boia