As it happens, mystery writer Evadne Mount, an old friend of Cora's, and Chief-Inspector Trubshawe, retired, formerly of Scotland Yard, are watching the shooting of the scene in which the actress drinks from a champagne glass whose content, unbeknownst to everyone except the murderer, has been laced with a strong poison.

In a postmodernist fashion, Adair not only has his characters, especially Evadne Mount, discuss red herrings, twist endings, spoilers, and reader response in general,[2] he also tells a story in which he both obeys and transgresses the boundaries and conventions of the Golden Age whodunit.

In a paraphrase of Ronald Knox, who claimed in 1929 that the elements of the mystery have to be "clearly presented to the reader at an early stage in the proceedings", Evadne Mount says so herself : In real life, the seed of virtually every serious crime, not only murder, is sown long before the performance of the act itself.

While there are references to British followers of the "thick-ear school"—the hardboiled style of crime writing— such as Peter Cheyney and James Hadley Chase, Evadne Mount's major worry is Agatha Christie herself, "the rival in whose shadow it would seem she was eternally condemned to languish" [5] despite the more than twenty successful whodunits she has published herself.

Finally, Adair creates a 1940s milieu by making (occasionally politically incorrect) references to, among many other things, dirty weekends, street urchins, spivs, "syncopated Negro music", "frogs" (such as Philippe Françaix), Woodbines, and the 'phone.