Belgium sleuth Hercule Poirot untangles a baffling mystery of a murderer who announces his next victims through a series of letters each addressed to the detective himself.

Master of the moor: As a boy, Stephen Whalby took to his beloved moor to escape trouble at home. Trouble follows him there as an adult, however, when women's bodies begin turning up among the rocks, heather, and bogs. Stephen finds no refuge when D.I. Manciple--a rude outsider, unwelcome in the village of Vangmoor--targets him as the prime suspect. Vanity dies hard: In the town of Salstead, the lives of two friends seem to take different trajectories....

Set in Glasgow, Scotland, Detective Chief Inspector Jim Taggart is a tough, sarcastic copper in the Maryhill Police Department. Funeral rites: Taggart tracks a ruthless killer in an investigation tinged with undertones of voodoo and black magic when a burnt corpse is found in an unused railway tunnel. Cold blood: a wife pumps six bullets into her cheating husband's body and Taggart perceives an open-and-shut case-- until the pathologist finds that...