Why Didn't They Ask Evans‪?‬

Why Didn't They Ask Evans? is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club in September 1934 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1935 under the title of The Boomerang Clue The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence(7/6)and the US edition at $2.00. The novel is set in Wales and Hampshire. Bobby Jones finds a man dying at his local golf course. A photo he saw in the man's pocket is replaced, as police seek his identity. Bobby and his friend Lady Frances Derwent have adventures as they solve the mystery of the man's last words: "Why didn't they ask Evans?" The novel was praised at first publication as "a story that tickles and tantalises", and that the reader is sure to like the amateur detectives and forgive the absence of Poirot. It had a lively narrative, full of action, with two amateur detectives who "blend charm and irresponsibility with shrewdness and good luck". Robert Barnard, writing in 1990, called it "Lively" but compared it to Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies and felt that the detectives were too much the amateurs.