Bobby Jones is on the golf course above the cliffs at Marchbolt, playing badly, when he hears a cry. On the rocks below he finds a man who has apparently fallen. The stranger opens his eyes, says one clear sentence, “Why didn’t they ask Evans?”, and dies. Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? is a standalone Agatha Christie mystery, published in London in September 1934. There is no Hercule Poirot and no series sleuth, only a vicar’s son and an earl’s daughter who decide the police have got it wrong.
What Is the Story Behind Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Bobby is the fourth son of the Vicar of Marchbolt, a fictional seaside town in Wales. He shares his name with the most famous golfer of the day, and Christie makes a joke of it: this Bobby Jones is no champion. Everyone calls the death an accident. Then a helpful gentleman’s story does not quite fit, and a photograph on the body turns out to be the wrong one. Soon someone tries to poison his beer.
With his childhood friend Lady Frances Derwent, known as Frankie, he sets out to solve the puzzle of the dying man’s last words. The trail leads from Wales to a country house in the Hampshire countryside. On the way the pair stage a car crash, and he goes undercover as a chauffeur. The title is simply the dead man’s last question. Christie took it from a remark she once overheard about a novel, and she chose it before she knew who Evans would be.
Our Review: Luck, Charm and Two Young Amateurs
This is the queen of crime in holiday mood. Our hero is modest and slow, Frankie is quick, bold and rich, and the friendship of Frankie and Bobby carries the book. The storyline runs on coincidence and luck more than on deduction, and Christie seems to know it. Their curiosity gets them into real danger, and there is genuine suspense in the last chapters. The twist is hiding in plain sight, and it turns on a small domestic detail rather than a grand discovery.
There is no real detective, the young pair are rescued by luck more than once, and a careful reader may spot the murderer early. The critics of 1934 said the same. None of that spoiled our fun. It is one of the most enjoyable books Christie wrote, even if it is not a classic Christie whodunit.
Critical Reviews and What Readers Say
The Times Literary Supplement called it a story that tickles and tantalises. The Observer found the narrative lively and full of action. In The Guardian, Milward Kennedy liked the young pair’s mix of charm and shrewdness but complained about how much they relied on luck. When it appeared in America in 1935, the New York Times reviewer said readers might even forgive Christie for leaving out Poirot. Later, the critic Robert Barnard called it lively but weakened by the lack of a proper detective. Readers today say much the same: they love the main characters and forgive the coincidences.
Agatha Christie, 1934 and the Disappearance
Christie was born in Torquay in 1890, and 1934 was one of her busiest years. Murder on the Orient Express came out in January, and this light-hearted book followed in September. In the same year, under the name Mary Westmacott, she published Unfinished Portrait, a semi-autobiographical novel about a woman whose marriage falls apart. Many readers see in it the crisis behind her own disappearance eight years earlier.
Has that disappearance ever been solved? Not for certain. On 3 December 1926 Christie left her home in Sunningdale, and her car was found abandoned at Newlands Corner in Surrey. Eleven days later she was found at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, registered under the surname of her husband’s lover. She and her doctors said she had lost her memory, and her autobiography passes over the episode almost entirely. Biographers still disagree. Some suspected a plan to embarrass her husband, while Andrew Norman argued for a dissociative fugue. Lucy Worsley’s 2022 biography treats it as a genuine episode of mental illness. What she did in those first hours, and why, remains unknown.
Editions: The Boomerang Clue, the Paperback and the Emilia Fox Audiobook
In the United States the book first appeared as The Boomerang Clue, published by Dodd, Mead in 1935. Today HarperCollins and William Morrow publish it under the original title, so a paperback copy or an ebook download is easy to find. The unabridged audio edition came out in 2012. If you like this kind of Christie, try her other light thrillers with young adventurers. Tommy and Tuppence in The Secret Adversary and The Seven Dials Mystery are good places to start.
There are three screen versions. In 1980 London Weekend Television made a three-hour film with Francesca Annis and James Warwick. In 2009 the Marple series turned it into a case for the elderly spinster, played by Julia McKenzie. In 2022 Hugh Laurie wrote and directed a three-part series with Will Poulter and Lucy Boynton, and he also played Dr Nicholson. Critics liked it: all 14 reviews counted by Rotten Tomatoes were positive.
The Ending (Spoilers)
Stop here if you have not read the book. Evans was a servant who had seen the real victim of the scheme. She would have recognised at once that something was wrong, and that is exactly why nobody asked her. The two young investigators find her much closer to home than they expected.
Quick Facts
| Author | Agatha Christie |
|---|---|
| Series | None, a standalone novel |
| First published | September 1934, Collins Crime Club, London |
| US title | The Boomerang Clue (Dodd, Mead, 1935) |
| Setting | Marchbolt, Wales, and a country house in Hampshire |
| Heroes | Bobby Jones and Lady Frances “Frankie” Derwent |
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most controversial Agatha Christie book?
Usually The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, for its rule-bending solution. And Then There Were None is the other candidate, for its original title.
Is it part of a series?
No, it stands alone. For Christie’s married amateur investigators, see our Partners in Crime review.
Is it a cozy mystery?
It is lighter than most Christies, but there are three murders and a kidnapping. Think of it as a Golden Age adventure with cozy charm. For more, see our British cozy mysteries.