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1961 novel by Agatha Christie

The Pale Horse is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1961, and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year. The UK edition retailed at fifteen shillings (15/ = 75p) with the famous mystery writer, Ariadne Oliver, he hears about a house which has been converted from an old inn called the Pale Horse. The house is inhabited by three modern "witches", led by Thyrza Grey. Visiting houses in the area, he meets Mr Venables, a man who uses a wheelchair and has no apparent explanation for his substantial wealth. Mark also visits the Pale Horse, and Thyrza Grey discusses with him the ability to kill at a distance, which she claims to have developed. In retrospect, it seems to Mark that she has been outlining to him a service that she would be willing to provide. As part of the police investigation, a witness, Zachariah Osborne, describes a man seen following Father Gorman shortly before the murder. Later, Osborne tells the police that he has seen the same man in a wheelchair. Even though he finds out that the man, Venables, is crippled by polio, and is incapable of standing due to the atrophy of his legs, Osborne remains certain of his identification and suggests that Venables could have faked his disability. Mark's girlfriend, Hermia, does not take his growing fears seriously and he becomes disaffected with her. He does, however, receive support from Ariadne Oliver, and from a vicar's wife, Dane Calthrop, who wants him to stop whatever evil might be taking place. Mark also makes an ally of Katherine "Ginger" Corrigan, a girl whom he has met in the area, and who successfully draws Poppy out about the Pale Horse organisation. Ginger obtains from Poppy an address in Birmingham, where Mark meets Mr Bradley, a disbarred lawyer, who outlines the means by which the Pale Horse functions without breaking the law that Bradley bets someone will die within a certain period of time and the client bets otherwise. If the person in question does die within that time, the client must pay. (One client who refused fell in front of an oncoming train and was killed). With the agreement of Inspector Lejeune and the co operation of Ginger, Mark agrees to solicit the murder of his first wife, who will be played by Ginger. At a ritual of some kind at the Pale Horse, Mark witnesses Thyrza apparently channel a malignant spirit through an electrical apparatus. Shortly afterwards, Ginger falls ill and begins to decline rapidly. In desperation, Mark turns to Poppy again, who mentions that her friend, Eileen Brandon, resigned from a research organisation called CRC (Customers' Reactions Classified) that seems to be connected with the Pale Horse. When Mrs Brandon is interviewed, she reveals that both she and Mrs Davis worked for the organisation, which surveyed targeted people about what foods, cosmetics and proprietary medicines they used. Ariadne Oliver contacts Mark with a key connection that she has made: another victim of the Pale Horse (Mary Delafontaine) has lost her hair during her illness. The same thing happened to Lady Hesketh Dubois, and Thomasina's hair was easily pulled out during the fight. Moreover, Ginger has begun to shed her own hair. Mark recognises the symptoms are of thallium poisoning, not some sort of satanic assassination. It is revealed that Osborne has been the brains behind the Pale Horse organisation, and that the black magic element was a piece of misdirection on his part. The murders were committed by replacing products the victims had named in the CRC survey with poisoned ones. Osborne's clumsy attempt to implicate Venables was a vital mistake. After Osborne's arrest, Mark and Ginger, who is recovering, become engaged.

Ariadne Oliver also appears in Parker Pyne Investigates, Cards on the Table, Mrs McGinty's Dead, Dead Man's Folly, Third Girl, Hallowe'en Party, and Elephants Can Remember. Colonel Despard (as Major John Despard) and Rhoda Dawes (maiden name) both also appear in Cards on the Table. Rev and Mrs Dane Calthrop both also appear in The Moving Finger.

Francis Iles (Anthony Berkeley Cox) praised the novel in the 8 December 1961 issue of The Guardian: "Mrs Agatha Christie is our nearest approach to perpetual motion. And not only does she never stop, but she drops the ball into the cup nearly every time; and if one is sometimes reminded of those automatic machines where one pulls a handle and out pops the finished product, that is a compliment to the automatic machine and not by any means a reflection on Mrs Christie. For the latest tug on the Christie handle produces a product which is not only up to the standard but even above it. The Pale Horse is in fact the best sample from this particular factory for some time, and that is saying plenty. The black magic theme is handled in a masterly and sinister fashion, and to give away what lay behind it would be unforgivable. This is a book which nobody (repeat, nobody) should miss." Iles further named the novel as his favourite in the paper's Critic's choice for the end of the year, published one week later, writing that "It has not been an outstanding year for crime fiction, but as usual there have been one or two first class items. The best puzzle has certainly been Agatha Christie's The Pale Horse." Robert Barnard: "Goodish late example – loosely plotted, but with intriguing, fantastical central idea. Plot concerns a Murder Inc. type organisation, with a strong overlay of black magic. Also makes use of 'The Box,' a piece of pseudo scientific hocus pocus fashionable in the West Country in the 'fifties (one of the things which drove Waugh to the verge of lunacy, as narrated in Pinfold)." In the "Binge!" article of Entertainment Weekly Issue #1343 44 (26 December 2014–3 January 2015), the writers picked The Pale Horse as an "EW favorite" on the list of the "Nine Great Christie Novels".

Several of Christie's earlier characters reappear in this book. In addition to Ariadne Oliver, Major Despard and his wife Rhoda (who met and fell in love in Cards on the Table) also participate in the plot. Mrs Dane Calthrop from The Moving Finger also reappears in approximately the same role as she played in that book: the rational but devoted Christian who wants the evil stopped. Mrs Oliver is apprehensive of attending a fete, for reasons that will be apparent to readers of her previous appearance in a Christie novel: Dead Man's Folly.

This novel is notable among Christie's books as it is credited with having saved at least two lives after readers recognised the symptoms of thallium poisoning from its description in the book. In 1975, Christie received a letter from a woman in Latin America who recognised the symptoms of thallium poisoning, thus saving a woman from slow poisoning by her husband. In 1977, a 19 month old infant from Qatar was suffering from a mysterious illness. After the baby was flown to London, Marsha Maitland, a nurse who had been reading The Pale Horse correctly suggested that the baby was suffering from thallium poisoning. In another instance, in 1971, a serial killer, Graham Frederick Young, who had poisoned several people, three fatally, was caught thanks to this book. A doctor conferring with Scotland Yard had read The Pale Horse and realised that the mysterious "Bovingdon bug" (the deaths occurred in a factory in Bovingdon, England) was in fact thallium poisoning. The novel is also cited to have been the "inspiration" of what was dubbed "The Mensa Murder". In 1988, George Trepal, a Mensa Club member, poisoned his neighbours, Pye and Peggy Carr and their children, with thallium introduced in a Coca Cola Classic bottles eight pack. Peggy Carr succumbed while the others survived the attack.

The novel was first adapted for TV by ITV in 1996, in a 100 minute TV film with Colin Buchanan as Mark Easterbrook. This version omitted the character of Ariadne Oliver. It makes Easterbrook the suspect in the killing of Father Gorman. At first it seems that the murders are masterminded by Venables, who it transpires is not disabled, but ultimately Osbourne is still revealed as the murderer.

It was adapted as a 2016 episode of the French television series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie.

In June 2019, it was announced that Sarah Phelps, who had written several Christie adaptations for BBC and Mammoth Screen, would write a new adaptation of The Pale Horse. The two part series was broadcast on 9 and 16 February 2020 on BBC One. The cast included Rufus Sewell as Mark Easterbrook, Sean Pertwee as Inspector Lejeune, Bertie Carvel as Zachariah Osborne, Kaya Scodelario as Hermia, and Sheila Atim, Rita Tushingham and Kathy Kiera Clarke as the “witches” of Much Deeping. It was only very loosely based on the novel, deviating in many significant ways, including the portrayal of Mark Easterbrook as a twice married antihero. The Independent noted that it had a "satisfying conclusion despite traditional whodunnit thrills", while The Telegraph asserted that it chucked "the rat filled kitchen sink into this rewrite of Agatha Christie".