I have read a few more pages and now I´m done. I really don´t want to read this book anymore. I have read the ending, though, to find out who the murderer was. 

Another book knocked off from my TBR. Next!

Page count: DNF at page 160 = $ 1.00

And I´m back again disliking Fen. At this point I would say he has some sort of personality disorder.  

Honestly, this book is bugging me. It´s incredibly sexist (essentially the victim deserved to die because she has used her sex to get what she wants), the mystery isn´t a compelling one and I´m bored by the rather one-dimensional characters in this book. 

Tigus and MbD both told me that they enjoyed later books in the Gervase Fen series. So this might be just the one that isn´t worth the read and could easily be skipped.

And he [Fen] rushed out of the room and returned a minute later with his wife. After she had greeted the Inspector with a slow, pleasant smile, Fen seized up the gun and handed it to her, saying: 

"Dolly, would you mind committing suicide for a moment?"

"Certainly." Mrs Fen remained unpertubred at this alarming request, and took the gun in her right hand, with her forefinger on her trigger; then she pointed it at her right temple.

"There!" said Fen triumphantly.

"Shall I pull the trigger?" asked Mrs Fen.

"By all means," he said absently, but Sir Richard surged up from his chair crying hoarsely: "Don´t! It´s loaded!" ans snatched the gun away from her. She smiled at him. "Thank you, Sir Richard," she said benignly, "but Gervase is hopelessly forgetful, and I shouldn´t have dreamed of doing such a thing. Is that all I can do for you gentleman?"

Dolly and Gervase seem to be a match made in heaven. I think I got the wrong first impression about Fen. Now that I have spend some more time with him, I think I´m going to like him after all. 

FYI, Fen didn´t try to kill his wife, he just wanted to prove a point.

I´m not completely sold on this book yet.

I like the theater setting and the relationsships between the characters. They either hate each other or are in love with each other, and everyone is stuck together in getting a play up on the scene.

What I don´t like about this story is the incessant foreshadowing along the lines of "character XYZ didn´t know that in one week from now he has heard something that points towards the murderer". Crispin does this repeatedly and I just really dislike it when an author chooses to do this, simply because I don´t think that this adds anything to the story (besides giving me the urge to scream at the author to please stop it).

And I just met Gervaise Fen, who seems to be a pompous ass, being rude to other people and who is completely full of himself. Poirot does share some of these characteristics, but he still a likable character. And Gervaise Fen isn´t likeable at all, at least so far.