Lord Edgware Dies (1933)

Plot: So who would want Lord Edgware dead?

“Getting rid of husbands is not my speciality”

Poirot almost comes a cropper in this outing which is full of style and charm, but, as my friend Lee points out, is “one of those where the least likely person did it.” In other words, people keep on pointing out that X cannot possibly have done the crime, and the more they underline this, the more you suspect X did it after all. A Murder Is Announced is another good example of this.

Where this book succeeds is in its evocation of 1930s London, full of parties and nightclubs and bright young things, a land of champagne and divorce and actors and female impressionists and all sorts of modern things.

In among all this is the character of Lord Edgware. “I just can't describe him, but he's – queer.” The clearly depraved Lord (forever nipping off to Paris, city of sin) is a baffling monster, far more effectively creepy for his enigmatically satanic nature and remarkably pretty butler than if Christie spelt out what exactly his problem was. The nearest we get are some snide remarks about the butler by Japp and some muttering about how the butler “might have posed for Hermes or Apollo. Despite his good looks there was something vaguely effeminate”.

Poirot is almost the only innocent character in this murky mess of deviance and deceit. “I should like everyone to be happy” he says early on, but even there we are misled. Japp later pronounces: 

“He's always been fond of having things difficult.... It's like an old lady playing at patience. If it doesn't come out, she cheats. Well, it's the other way round with him. If it's coming out too easily, he cheats to make it more difficult.”

Japp is right all along. Poirot takes great delight in terrorising a suspect who misled him. “I hope you have now been sufficiently punished for coming to me – me, Hercule Poirot, with a cock-and-bull story.”

In the end, although Poirot is clever, the murderer nearly gets away with it by being stupid. This sounds silly, but isn't. This is a story about a social manipulator who isn't clever but is very good at using people. In some ways this is far more satisfactory than a master criminal – seeing Poirot faring badly against his intellectual inferior is a great payoff.

Murder in the Mews (1937)

Plot: Four long mysteries for Poirot.

Murder in the Mews: 

“What are they like? Gay? Lots of Parties? That sort of thing?”

Poirot and Japp investigate a murder in a house where two ladies live together. One plays golf. It's impossible not to read this as accidental lesbian hilarity, even though there's not a whisker of it in the story itself. Instead it's a rather robust narrative about a blackmailer gradually ensnared in a trap of his own making. The pay-off to the story is very satisfying as Christie manages (even with a very limited cast list) to nudge you in one direction while at the same time pulling the rug from under you. It WAS who you thought it was, but not for the reasons you suspected. If you see what I mean.

The Incredible Theft: 

“Here I scream” said Poirot helpfully. He opened his mouth and let out a shrill little bleat.

A country house, stolen plans, a weekend party of spies and gamblers... and a maid who has seen a ghost. It's all amiable stuff, with Poirot at his mischievous best. He's being told a pack of lies by nearly everyone and doesn't fail to let them all know that he finds it vastly amusing. It's a story about truth – or about good lies. As Poirot puts it pointedly “The lies I invent are always most delicate and most convincing”. He is both reassuring his host and also reminding the household that they are amateurs up against an expert on truth.

Essentially Poirot finds himself in a classic crime situation and proceeds to enjoy himself immensely. So great is Poirot's enjoyment that he even appears to chat up a maid, and get chatted up in return. He certainly is at great pains to praise her beauty. Maybe this is simply due to their shared Gallic nature?

Dead Man's Mirror

“One cannot escape one's Karma.”

Another “ideal for television” adventure featuring a country house, a locked-room and a lot of suspects, this manages to be a fairly straightforward Poirot pot-boiler set among the Chevenix-Gores. This is a household of improbables and suspectables right out of The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd, and it rattles along at a fair pace... right up to an ending that made me go “oh no, hang on, there are too many suspects – which one of you are you again?”. But it's a ripping yarn.

Triangle At Rhodes

Poirot is on a beach holiday. Sat next to a woman who fancies herself as an observer of human nature. Yet it is Poirot who spots a crime in the offing. Readers of Death On The Nile and Curtain will recognise two things – Poirot issuing a significant warning, and Poirot detecting the hand of a social manipulator at work. The story also bears similarities with one of Miss Marple's 13 Problems, and is another great example of how Agatha Christie ensures that bad things happen to husband-stealing women.

Dumb Witness (1937)

Plot: The curious case of the dog in the night.

Very much a companion piece to After The Funeral, this is a story that also features a downtrodden companion, an inheritance, and a clutch of ill-deserving relatives. However, it unwinds in a very different way.

One major difference is that Hastings is narrating, and shows a remarkable degree of psychological insight this time out.... although that's because he finally meets his intellectual equal, a small dog who he spends ages describing while Poirot stamps around pointing at enormous clues which Hastings utterly misses cos he's too busy playing with his new friend.

There is even a marvellous scene where Poirot is forced to demonstrate a clue to Hastings, then make it out of cardboard, and cut it out and demonstrate it to his hapless companion... all without illumination. We have Poirot jumping up and down, pretty much shouting out what's going on, and Hastings as oblivious as a sheep. Just this once, Christie lets us in early.

At around about you may well work out what is really going on – allowing a nice little cushion of smugness as the ending of the book plays out. Admittedly this gets immediately and creepily unsettled before going back to run along the lines we originally suspected – this is, after all, a book with a very very creepy husband and a very nervy wife...

The real shame of this book is that the victim has to die. Emily Arundell is a lovely character, full of life and fun and the book is all the poorer without her – but we do get her friend, the lovely Miss Peabody, who sees right through Hercule Poirot.

The Arundell family themselves are stupid, venal and worthless. Pretty Theresa is unimpressed by Poirot (lamenting that she doesn't have her autograph book on her), Charles just wants some money, and the plain daughter simply laments that she doesn't have the looks or the money or her relatives. Faced with such lamentable people, Poirot is at his least scrupulous, planting misinformation, listening at doors and playing the warring family off against each other. It's a delight that Hastings (when he notices) doesn't approve of any of this. But it shows that, just occasionally, Poirot doesn't care.

Despite the twee wrappings (does a dog know who did a murder? awww) the story contains a remarkable assortment of clues, all of which turn out to be relevant (pay attention to the mad spiritualist sisters who witness a glowing cloud of ectoplasm). It is a story that ties itself up neatly – any injustices are evened out slightly, and there is even a marriage of sorts, as Hastings finds true love at last:

“Woof,” said Bob with energetic assent.

After the Funeral (1953)

Plot: Nun of it's what it seems.

Look out! There's mis-direction thundering through this book. The identity of the killer is boldly given away very early by a stray comment about the pleasing nature of a bath bun. But even so, this is just an audacious hint that what seems to be a country-house murder is Anything But.

Yet more proof that Christie changes with the times is that she's prepared to write a book with such a novel twist on The Butler Did It. You think (for quite a while) that this is all about the murder of a man with a legacy and his frankly awful family – but this is, instead, not about these people at all. To say the family are entirely red herrings is slightly unfair, but they are mostly ghastly window dressing for a very subtle crime.

When the unveiling happens, Christie's prose is at its best with the killer's description of their goals in life:

“One can occasionally get quite nice china – export rejects – not that awful white utility stuff.... Oak tables and little basket charis with striped red and white cushions.”

This is followed by the gasp “I've never imagined a lady-like murderer”. It's the “-like” that's deadly. The killer even shouts “Of course, one never looks much at...”. This isn't quite a middle-class mystery, but Christie shows that she's quite prepared to get inside the heads of people you assume she wouldn't have much time for.

In some ways the killer is a redrawing of Dora Bunner from A Murder Is Announced – someone with reduced circumstances but no poverty of ambition. And, frankly, one of the messages about this book is that good money is wasted on bad people.

Christie has visited this idea in books like A Pocketful Of Rye and Taken At The Flood – the idea of a cursed house full of vile people gradually reaching a kind of grace, but in this book almost the entire cast are rotten – beyond one smart daughter with a good head for business (but no head for men).

If Christie's having fun with her formula, she's also having fun with Poirot, who enters the mystery with an elaborate disguise, only to unveil himself equally elaborately - “Hercule Poirot at your service.”. The reaction is priceless:

“His name seemed to mean nothing at all to them.”

This is a book in which the perpetually retired Poirot has finally passed from fame. It's telling that he's more plausible disguised as a eurocrat than as a detective. We also get a return of Mr Goby, the investigator who only makes eye contact with inanimate objects and who uses nuns as enquiry agents... which leads us to the book's best red-herring, the Nuns! They flit sinisterly through the book, crow-like portents of doom, but in the end, do they have any relevance? Or are they simply more clutter to distract us all from a really audaciously disguised mystery?

Black Coffee

Plot: Can you pastische Christie? What happens when you novelise a stageplay of hers...

And we're back with a journey into different territory with Black Coffee - a faithful adaptation of Christie's Poirot play by Charles Osborne.

Where this suceeds briliantly is that is delivers exactly what you think a Christie novel is - remote country house, locked room, murder by poison, brilliant solution by detective etc etc. It's an archetype, and it's strange to realise with a bump "oh, no, hang on, it's nothing of the sort - the other novels aren't like this".

So, Black Coffee delivers what you expect of Christie rather than what she so often dishes up. There are plenty of stock characters - brilliant scientist, noble secretary, troubled son, foreign wife, dodgy visiting stranger, bright young gal etc etc, but it is marvellous to see them gathered together literally all in the same place.

It's hard to review this, as such. Charles Osborne makes himself almost invisible as an author - allowing himself the occasional bit of scene setting (including baldly setting the story in 1934 and directly after The blessed Big Four). The dialogue feels lifted straight from the play, along with a lot of stage directions, and as such there are no real alarm bells ringing. It's a genuinely self-effacing bit of work.

I suppose the big annoyance is that Christie lifts a key plot point from Mysterious Affair At Styles and plonks it down at the end of Black Coffee. As soon as you see the offending object in the drawing of the room you think "oh no", and so it proves.

What is blissful about this as a novel is that it doesn't outstay its welcome - it contains just enough plot for its 200 pages and rattles through as a couple of hours reading, with plenty of jokes and joys.

Osborne really succeeds in conjuring up the feeling of this being a performed stage play - which is odd. I think it's the lifted stage directions that do it, but you get a real feeling less of this being a real drawing room and more that this is a set with actors dotted around it, making exits and dramatic entrances.

There are various other joys. There's more of Christie's hospital dispensing experience trotted out for our entertainment, and Poirot is a great character here - slightly enhanced for the stage and so ringing out clearly through the book. I think it's nice that there's at least one book in the canon that proudly does what you expect it to - although it's interesting that, when asked about his desire to star as Poirot on the stage, Suchet has indicated that he'd rather not be in Black Coffee.

Murder on the Links (1923)

Plot: Well, there's a murder. On some links.

What happens when Agatha Christie isn't as famously readable as normal? For some reason Murder On The Links bounced off my eyes tiresomely and I grew cross with myself for just not getting it. Well, for the first 150 pages or so.

It's an odd book - lacking the fluid style of "golden age" Christie, the sheer machine code brilliance of "The Mysterious Affair At Styles", or even the bonkers madness of "The Big Four", it just happens. Perfectly competently etc etc, but just so hard to get into.

The failing is more with me than with Christie - by now I'm looking for things which aren't yet there. Poirot is a stiff cadaver, Hastings an unsubtle booby, and although the murder happens swiftly, the mechanics of the investigation grind mercilessly on as one drab character after another is wheeled creakingly to the stage to give a statement. It's all so lifeless and tepid.

Poirot's stilted characterisation isn't helped by the introduction of Giraud, an even more outlandishly eccentric Gallic detective. Each is just a heap of annoying mannerisms, both treat Hastings with amused scorn, and neither makes the other feel real and...

And then, once you're over the first 150 pages, the fireworks go off.

Trying to put my finger on it, I'd risk saying that the book improves as soon as Christie gets her big cheat out of the way. Poirot rushes off to Paris and comes back with a bit of information the reader could not have possibly known, deduced or guessed. As soon as Poirot slaps this down on the table, the book changes gear and all sorts of intercontinental madness is rolled out at great pace, the enormous plot engine churning furiously away.

Suddenly the book becomes ripping fun. We meet twin acrobats! We hurtle between France and England and France again! We meet new characters! We dramatically re-interpret old ones! There are wigs and disguises, and remarkable, remarkable twists. It's as though Christie has finally pushed the book up a wearisome slope and is now enjoying freewheeling downhill.

All sorts of things that seemed lumpen suddenly have a purpose, and, amid all the fireworks, there's a lot of sheer misdirection. If you catch your breath, the direction from which the murderer comes is obvious, but you don't pause, not even for a second as you're just too excited. Christie keeps pulling back the stage, announcing twist after giddy twist - many of them exquisitely sign-posted.

It's like the welcome return of an old friend. Much of Murder On The Links reads like the kind of contemporary fiction Christie often spoofs - intriguing mystery, eccentric detective, not much else... but those last hundred pages she's firmly back in the driving seat. The glory of the end of the book is tremendous - Poirot is almost godlike in his cunning, Hastings is at his best, both as a character and biased narrator, and the whole thing is fluidly oiled.

Which makes Not Getting On with the opening even more annoying. It feels like the fault is squarely mine rather than Christie's. But, as this is the internet, the home of snide carping, I'll instead say that it is the sign of a mastercrafstman finding their true voice in midflight. There we go - that's a thunderingly mixed metaphor. Good.

Third Girl (1966)

Plot: Dolly birds on disco drugs! Poirot sails into the sixties!

Yet more japes with Ariadne Oliver and Hercule Poirot, this time set in the wild whirl of sixties flatshares. Things have come quite a way from the boarding house of Hickory Dickory Dock - we're in a world where three young gals pal up in a flat, swapping chit chat over morning coffee and sharing gossip about their come-downs:

"I was up too late last night," Frances said, "... Basil would make us try some new pills - Emerald Dreams."

Now, don't roll your eyes. Despite all this lunacy it's all very jolly. Christie's always been quite blase about drugs, and despite this odd hiccup, the relentless sang-froid actually suits the feel of the story - which is a bit like that Murray Lachlan Young poem "Everyone's Taking Cocaine".

The constant drugs form an important background, as underneath all this (slight spoilers) is the suspected Gaslighting of poor Norma the Third Girl. Is she really a mentally disturbed murderess? Is she taking refuge in drugs? Is she doing things unconsciously? Or is something stranger happening? The truth is both interesting and complex, and shows Christie experimenting with a whole new type of murder and a whole new type of poisoning.

The trick that Christie is pulling is actually very clever, as she uses the drugs both as a red herring and as a key ingredient, and also uses them to misdirect you away from what's really going on (which has slight echoes of Curtain).

Both Poirot and Ariadne are clearly very old here - in fact, the whole mystery starts because Norma takes one look at Poirot, nearly tells him everything and then says "I'm sorry, but you're too old" and rushes out of the room.

In a way this is the story of the Golden Age of Crime trying to come to terms with the 1960s. Although, what actually happens is that the Golden Age storytelling tames the 60s. Gradually Christie stirs some familiar ingredients into the new age - so we get a country house, a mysterious old colonel writing his memoirs, a sinister foreign nurse, and a ruggedly heroic doctor type who is planning on emigrating to the colonies. Elements that Christie cannot control she cunningly unleashes Poirot on, so we see him running an espionage network, and even arranging a kidnapping from a greasy spoon cafe.

Ariadne Oliver is as splendid as ever, and gets to go on a secret mission, attend an artist's studio party, and get clubbed unconscious. The latter act has curious similarities to the indisposal of Tuppence in By The Pricking Of My Thumbs - surely, you think later, it would have been easy to murder the old love? But then we'd be denied a great character.

Talking of characters, we get a lovely old loopy colonel who manages this week's winning racist remark about Poirot:

"A clever chap but a thorough frog, isn't he? You know, mincing and dancing and bowing and scraping."

Again, not a *great* book, but a thoroughly lovely rattle of a read which gets away with it.

Dead Man's Folly (1956)

Plot: A murder mystery game turns real.

You're in for a bit of a surprise with Dead Man's Folly. It pulls off that strange late Christie trick of being very readable and entertaining whilst being... er, not very good.

Things that suck:

1) The murder of a child.
Christie just sails into this without even a flicker of sentimentality. Poor Marlene Tucker is vulgar, which kind of marks her out for death. There's even the monstrous moment where a doctor is asked if it's a sex crime: "I wouldn't say so, no. I shouldn't say she'd been a very attractive girl." Marlene's family are treated similarly badly with mutterings about their grubbiness, nagging, and general weakness. Her mother's reaction is a mixture of sobbing grief and a lament that her husband won't get his chance at the coconut shy now.

2) Not with Poirot around
By now, surely, you'd know better than to stage a murder with Poirot on the scene? We've encountered this problem before in Death On The Nile, but this is a positive trumpeting, arranging for Poirot to be on hand for a pre-determined death. Are we supposed to believe that murderers are brashly over-confident?

3) The whole reason for the crime
When you realise what's causing all this, you do have a sudden spike of worry. Is that really all it comes down to? There are about three different solutions that would avoid any homicide. One of which is to claim mumps, the other is to rush off shopping and leave a note. It's genuinely a case where murder just seems like a lot of trouble just to avoid an awkward social occasion.

4) The ending
It's not just rushed, it's a positive cascade of revelation. Many of the facts are Utterly New to the reader. There's no feeling of "Oh, if only I'd realised" just a lament of "Oi, that's not fair!". This is offset by the marvellous symbolism of Poirot's last act which makes the entire book make sense.

But what's to love about this book?

1) Ariadne and Hercule
Christie's fictional alter ego bumbles through the book brilliantly. She's outraged at learning that "apparently she drinks like a fish" and is all mad hair and scatty schemes that make her great fun - and Poirot positively softens under her influence. The two balance each other nicely and make for a great pair.

2) The Idea
There's a story in "While The Last Lasts" based on a treasure hunt Christie was asked to devise. Here we see a whole mystery built up around a murder game... the only shame is that the game is abandoned so quickly, and proves to be almost incidental to the actual murder (a good hard shove on a dark night would be a lot subtler).

3) The Parallels
Ariadne Oliver's mind creates some bizarre characters for her game - outlandish grotesques who all, eventually, turn out to have their twins somewhere in the book. It's a clever way of Christie getting away with a larger-than-life plot while at the same time mocking the extravagances of crime fiction.

4) Mrs Folliat
The lapsed gentlewoman is lovely. We've come a long way from the roaring gals of the 1920s to the genteel poor. Mrs Folliat is a proto-Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton, renting out the lodge while her stately home is occupied by newcomers. She maintains her social position almost effortlessly, and behaves with perfect grace as the real lady of the manor. It's a very complicated, bittersweet portrait of fallen grandeur, and Christie pulls it off brilliantly... especially when we realise that Mrs F's sacrifices have been more severe than we originally realised.

5) Lady Stubbs
The naively manipulative wife is another great portrait. Everyone involved announces that she's a really very stupid women, and yet no-one can quite escape her simpering manipulation. She manages to dominate the book while spending quite a lot of it absent, usually tucked up in bed.

There are also a lot of familiar themes knocking around - impersonation, long-lost relatives, sinister spies, dangerously smooth foreighners, and even the terrible mayhem wrought by a new wife...

Yes, it may be a bit of an odd read, and not one of the best, but it's still very rewarding.

Death In The Clouds (1935)

Plot: Murder in mid-air with a sting in the tale.

Sorry for the summary which makes me feel like someone haplessly subbing Jeffrey Archer blurbs. It's not doing Death In The Clouds justice. Let's start by looking at a few tropes:

1) Locked room mystery
Peculiarly, Christie doesn't often use this device. When she does, she frequently sets herself the added challenge of locking all the suspects in with the victim - here, in Murder On The Orient Express and even in Cards On The Table. Just for an added bit of fun.

Of course, Christie doesn't leave it at that, and makes one of the suspects a hapless author of detective fiction who is too busy consulting his railway timetables to spot a real murder taking place in front of him. Poor Mr Clancy with his mess and bananas is the butt of a lot of the book's humour.

2) Plain Jane Super Brain
We know what to expect of Jane Grey by now. She's that figure who emerges in 30s Christie - plucky, lower-middle class. Ordinary background but bright and capable. Sometimes she's a typist, sometimes a shop assistant. Here she's a hairdresser. Perhaps placed there for her typical reader she's not a noblewoman with a sports car, but an aspirational figure - taken out of normal life and plunged into a world of intrigue and murder. There are a lot of similarities with Jane and the heroine of They Came To Baghdad - she's practical, reasonable, develops an interest in archaeology (and archaeologists), and is not necessarily looking for love in the right place.

3) The Dashing Young Man Who Is Not What He Appears
Talking of which, the less said the better. But Christie is developing an archetypal character who will rock up, be jolly reasonable, and yet... come the end...

4) The Society Bitch
There's no other phrase for Lady Horbury, who is just vile and Christie has enormous fun with her. Men-stealing society harpies get little mercy from Christie (is this revenge for the end of her first marriage?), and Lady H has every single vice lovingly described. She takes cocaine with more gusto than any other Christie character we've so far encountered which clearly marks her out as a wrong-un. She even declared "Do you know who I am?" and is unable to file her nails without assistance. Her ultimate fate will annoy readers, but is in keeping with the journey of similar characters in titles like Five Little Pigs.

5) Sensation
Christie frequently mocks the absurdity of the plot - it's all about a woman assasinated in mid-air with snake venom. But, as Poirot points out "c'est possible?" - but it's very effective as a mystery. It's made even more so by some vicious mockery of the press, with a wonderful interlude courtesy of a reporter from the Weekly Howl with "a certain glib assurance" and a loose connection to the truth. Reading this book explains why Christie didn't love giving interviews.

6) Avoidance of formula
Christie's well into her stride with this book. She manages to fit in the dutiful round of interrogations, and even the obvious list-making, but she breaks it up compellingly. So our detectives dart across the Channel, assume disguises, investigate curiosities, arrange two weddings and provide a list of everyone's luggage (both stuffed with clues and also a fascinating cultural document).

7) Jews
It's tempting to type "anti-semitism rears its ugly head", but that's almost falling into the same trap. We meet a Jewish hairdresser called Antoine who is referred to as "Ikey Andrew". He's not a sympathetic character and I really wish he hadn't been Jewish. It's getting tiresome.

8) Dentists
Hello Norman Gale, Jane's bumbling quasi-love-interest. Again we see Poirot forming a band of investigators out of his suspects, and Norman is fun. On first seeing Jane on the plane he checks her for gum disease. We follow his thoughts as his practice collapses as his patients shy away from him after his involvement with the murder, provoking a hint of One, Two, Buckle My Shoe with the line "If the dentist were to run amuck".

Lord knows why I'm making a list, as it means I can't come up with a heading for Poriot's use of the phrase "Le Sex Appeal", no matter how much I want to.

Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)

Plot: Poirot solves death at the digs.

Hello death! You're everywhere. One can imagine the dinner party where, after the soup a guest leans over and says, "But Mrs Christie, it must be so interesting spending six months of the year on a dig! You really must set one of your murders there, absolutely must."

As we've seen, archaeology and travel to the cradles of civilisation is a frequent theme in Christie, one that hardens once she meets Max Mallowan. It is in this story that it finds its clearest expression, both in the setting and the moment when Poirot finds a murdered body in a grave from thousands of years ago and ponders human existence, society, and the very notion of a murder mystery ("A Mrs Leidner of two thousand years ago").

Murder in Mesopotamia is about people living on a grave. We've all seen Amityville Horror and Pet Cemetery - we know what happens next. Christie plonks the 1930s like the latest layer on a tottering cake of death, putting all of human life into perspective. For Poirot, on his way back from Syria, this is just one more case. For the other players, but one event in their lives. Lives which are long over by the time we read it. Yet, for all that, Christie says it is still important.

Depending on how you look on it, Murder In Mesopotamia is either reliant on a bizarre contrivance or is a palimpsest. I was taught the word at univesity - a piece of parchment that was rubbed out and overwritten, just like several of the characters in Murder In Mesopotamia.

At the centre we have Mrs Leidner, the archaeologist's wife, a woman who 20 years ago married a spy and has almost wilfully forgotten every detail of him beyond his handwriting. We have the spy himself, who may still be alive somewhere in the ruins, unrecognised by his wife.

Crikey, you think. That's unlikely - and, indeed, the TV adaptation goes to some efforts to tidy this up, separating the lovers immediately after their wedding and saying "well, her first marriage was in black in white, there's no way she'd recognise him now". But this very personal history is indeed unearthed, with the added complication that, somewhere on the dig may also lurk that first husband's vengeful brother, who may even, suggests Poirot, be impersonating the female narrator, Nurse Leatheran.

This is, as you may have guessed, a story that layers improbability on improbability. We have letters from the dead husband, we have forged letters from the dead husband, we have art thieves, we have drug addicts shaking among the rubble, we have a jolly hockeysticks gal who keeps on turning up and suggesting tennis (she's wandered in from Murder At Ther Vicarage) ... and yet, at the same time, we have Poirot who cuts sharply through all this absurdity.

For example, there is the ghostly figure at the window, whose very unreality turns out to be both a cruel trick and a deadly lure. We have a squinting foreigner and a sinister monk, who Poirot dispatches with a couple of clues. It's all, in the most literal sense, window dressing. Murder In Mesopotamia is a puzzle box where none of the clues are not what they appear to be. Much time is spent, for example, in establishing movements at the fatal moment across the courtyard. Christie has great fun here recycling charming local colour from her memoir "Come Tell Me How You Live" and bamboozling the reader (there's even a diagram)... and it's all the auther red-herringing loudly "Look at the Courtyard! The Courtyard!".

A similar blind is Mrs Leidner's nature. In the book she is, according to who is speaking, either a charmer, a schemer, a hypocondriac or a siren. Nurse Leatheran decides that she likes her, and for the most part, she seems rather fun. But we are also supposed to think that she is the malign household god who drives the happy expedition to misery. This is easily done in the book, but, again, the TV adaptation struggles with this - on screen it's all too clear that Mrs Leidner is a good enough sort.

Mind you, the TV version does a decent job with poor Miss Johnson, who, before suffering a truly terrible death, must nearly reveal the solution three times. In print the first revelation works rather well. It is quite obvious, he says haughtily, that the second approach to the jump is mere teasing - she quite baldly states that she's worked it out, but just has to think about it. The TV version cleverly throws in a misdirection here, which covers what is in the genre the fine old declaration "I know the answer and so must die". Her third revelation (in very gruesome circumstances) is in a fine tradition of teasing ambiguity (Is there an occasion in Christie where a victim cries "Fred did it"?).

I should stick in a word here about the art thieves. This is an archaeological expedition where, to a greater or lesser extent, most of the expedition are frauds - some aren't who they claim to be, some just don't want to be there, and one's off his tits. It's poetic justice that their finds are all stolen and replaced with copies. No-one notices - which raises a few basic points about their competence, but also touches on the idea of the real value of a find - is it the object itself or simply the discovery?

Finally, a few words about Nurse Leatheran. I like the old bird. She's a Christie archetype - the stong, sympathetic type. We've seen her in Death In The Clouds and on The Blue Train. She's detatched, she's cool, she's reliable - and, such a sharp observer that Poirot fears for her life. The TV adaptation backgrounds her in favour of Hastings, which is understandable, especially as it gives the mystery another suspect. It is noticeable in this book that Poirot doesn't draw up a list of suspects. He'll rattle through them occasionally, but if we had one of his blunt lists we'd realise that they were rather thin on the ground.

This is also one of those Christies where if you play "Who has the least reason and the most solid alibi?" you'll get the correct answer immediately.

NEXT: Death in the Clouds

The ABC Murders (1936)

Plot: Poirot must hunt down an alphabetical serial killer.

The ABC Murders follows on nicely from "Why Didn't They Ask Evans". While the latter book is a solid-enough romp (oh, that sounds like faint praise, but you know what I mean - it's robust run-around fun), The ABC Murders does some very remarkable things with a similar set up.

It also features a chase across England sparked by mysterious clues found on a body, delights in misdirection and heroic endeavour.... but it's both a more preposterous and yet darker tale.

The preposterous bits are met head-on by Poirot. While Hastings thrills to them (strange clues and taunting letters and all), Poirot is grim about the whole thing - he sees it as an elaborate bit of set dressing, a disguise for something else. Poirot does not like finding himself in a book. It's easy to see why Hastings is recalled as narrator for this - he pretty much has the time of his life, whereas Poirot is furious at what is going on. He realises what Hastings does not - that the killer will claim several pointless lives in order to disguise their true intentions.

Christie backs this grimness up with a remarkable switch in narrative. Several scenes are told from "the killer's" point-of-view, as the worried Alexander Bonaparte Cust begins to worry that he himself is committing the crimes. He's a fascinating character, and it's both touching and disturbing when Poirot meets him - ABC is one of the walking wounded of the First World War, a man so broken and disturbed that he's never been quite right since, and has no idea whether or not he still has a place in society.

Poirot is the very opposite of displaced. "I am like the prima donna who always makes one more appearance" he tells Japp in answer to the question of his retirement. Japp responds "Shouldn't wonder if you ended by detecting your own death. That's an idea that is, ought to be put into a book." Hmmmmn.

Poirot is all about order, and sees the grim game as an excuse to teach Hastings how to pack properly, to be suspicious of fingerprints ("I put that in to please you, my friend.") and a just wariness of inventive journalism. Poirot even uses xenophobia as a smart way to pick out the killer from his "jeer at foreigners" which suggests that some of her unfortunate comments are a good deal cleverer than they often appear, especially when Poirot taunts the murderer with "I consider your crime not an English crime at all - not above-board - not sporting..."

Christie's style is at full blast throughout. As well as the marvellous Cust passages there are some brilliant descriptions, such as a body found by a "fresh-air early morning Colonel".

In hunting down the killer, Poirot forms a merry band of friends to help him. This isn't a unique device - we've seen that same kind of thing in The Secret Of Chimneys and Three Act Tragedy - and, as always, this isn't quite what it seems.

It is smart Megan Barnard who starts to see though this society of friends. She's an interesting, emancipated lower-middle class female character - something of a rarity in Christie, but very good. "What you've been saying. It's just words. It doesn't mean anything," she tells Poirot after a pep talk. Poirot is taken aback, but approving - he's playing a game of his own. As he says at the end of the book "Vive le sport!"

Three Act Tragedy (1934)

Plot: A famous actor enlists Poirot and Satterthwaite's help to investigate a series of baffling murders.

Poirot may never have teamed up with Miss Marple (Christie claimed they'd annoy each other – which is THE WHOLE POINT), but he cheerfully twins the Belgian Brain with the Love Detective to solve what looks like a drawing room crime mystery.

Called in by famous thesp Sir Charles, the crimes suit both detectives – for Satterthwaite there is a love to bring about, and for Poirot there is a cunning crime. And Sir Charles himself isn't beyond playing the detective.

The whole book is staged – Christie admits so by providing a cast list and credits at the beginning (and even a hint of the solution). As Charles Osborne points out in his book on Christie, this is a book where the murderer, once you fix on them, is quite blindingly obvious (indeed, the recent TV adaptation has to go to Utterly Extraordinary Lengths to try and overcome this, leaving you shouting “Why aren't they showing XXX in shot? Why?”). And, it is worth mentioning, this is one time when the Butler did it. Well, kind of. But this is after all, a staged mystery.

Satterthwaite works very well with Poirot. His first observation of the man has him “suspecting him of deliberately exaggerating his foreign mannerisms”, an admission that Poirot later makes himself.

Poirot is content to background himself (“It is Sir Charles who must have the star part” he says) – except for at the remarkable curtain line (“It might have been ME.”). This doesn't prevent him from being as playful as the murderer – the scene where he stages a murder of his own is, when you read it a second time, extraordinarily inventive, and sees Poirot actually taking the murderer on at their own game.

Poirot isn't the only one making acute observations and impersonations. Christie's ear for servant dialogue shows itself again. There's Mrs Leckie who gets an entire page of dialogue with barely a pause for breath, and marvellous it all is (“good girls they are, every one of them – not that I'd say that Doris gets up when she should do in the morning,..).

Fittingly, the book includes an author in peril – a shy mousy, malicious woman who is content to observe life and knows more about what's going on that she lets admits. If it is a Christie self-portrait, it's an odd one. Literary theorists will be delighted to discover that the last chapters of the book feature a race by the detective to save the life of the author, for in reality, the poor dear is as much a victim as one of her own creations as the characters elsewhere in the book. Er, discuss.

NEXT: Hitler's secret son! Hippies destroy the world! It's Passenger To Frankfurt!

While The Light Lasts (1997)

Plot: Random love stories with a bit of Poirot.

While The Light Lasts is a curious collection. It's almost a merging of the supernatural and the romantic magic of Mary Westmacott with a very, very occasional crime thrown in.

The Edge is the most curious story - if you're a fan of reading autobiography into fiction. It's about a dowdy lover cast aside by a shallow man for a young beauty. Published just after Christie found out about her husband's affair and ran away, it's easy to assume that this is a little act of revenge.

There's also a lot to love about Manx Gold. The story itself is pulp Christie, but the idea of hiding the clues to a real treasure hunt throughout the narrative is extremely innovative, even if you actually have to be standing on the Isle of Mann to stand a chance of solving any of them.

The Actress is a story about a plucky actress thwarting a blackmailer - and it's easy to see in this the prototype for all of Christie's quick-witted and frequently villainous actresses.

There's also The Lonely God, a surprisingly kind story about love winning out in the end, thanks to a sweet-natured idol.

But that's about it for upbeat. Ignoring the Poirot reprints of early versions, the rest of the collection is about the thwarting of love. Painters and paintings abound - Within A Wall features a painter who only realises the true nature of the woman he loves and the woman he hates when it is too late. The House of Dreams is about a vision and madness, and While The Light Lasts features the shock of a returning husband and a last glimpse of happiness - an idea which turns up in Taken At The Flood.

Is it a great collection? Maybe not. But it is refreshingly different after a diet of pluck, twists and endless impostors.

Poirot Investigates (1924)

Plot: More early cases! Missing jewels, ancient curses and prime ministers for Poirot.


This collection of Poirot short stories shares several familiar themes. Risking mild spoilers, I'm going to lump them as follows:


Don't trust the servants!
The Jewel Robbery At The Grand Metropolitan and The Mystery Of Hunter's Lodge and The Italian Nobleman all demonstrate this in different ways - all complicated puzzle box mysteries where the only possible solution is that the only people who could have done it are the people you're not supposed to notice. In one case, the butler actually does it.

Impostors!
Christie's fascination with disguise and identity runs through the collection. Two of the above stories are about servants who aren't servants, but we also get The Disappearance Of Mr Davenheim (a thief who isn't a thief), The Million Dollar Bond Robbery (naughty nurse and fake passenger), The Cheap Flat (substitute victims), The Western Star (impostor jewels), and the Kidnapped Prime Minister (guess who isn't quite what they appear to be here?).

Of course, this lumping is a gross simplification - each is just a facet in a constantly recut puzzle. But, if you want to solve-along-with-Poirot, it's a wise bet to keep a suspicious eye on the servants, overlapping alibis, and people who might not be who they claim to be.

If we're going to carry on in this slightly facetious mood, we'll miss the fun. The Egyptian Tomb, for instance, could be said to be about faked symptoms and false curses, but that's to ignore an atmospheric tale of foreign travel, mysterious shadows and, of course, the contemporary fun of Tutankhamun's Tomb.

The Tragedy Of Marsden Manor has a similar dance - it's pure atmosphere, even featuring a ghost. The ghoulish aspects of the story become enormously enhanced in the telly version, which looks like a prototype Jonathan Creek.

The fun-from-beyond-the-grave continues with The Missing Will, an adventure where a dead man sets his niece a puzzle - there's an interesting parallel here with Miss Marple's final cases, which are pretty much concerned with hidden wills, mysterious legacies and impossible disguises.

These stories may be slight, but there's plenty of time to fit in the odd thriller - The Cheap Flat looks like it might be about the difficulties of renting somewhere nice in London, but it's actually about an international spy ring. The Kidnapped Prime Minister pulls off the same trick of global scandal happening around Poirot, who plays the eye of the storm, even famously stating his methods - refusing to fly about Europe or look for cigarette ash, he simply pounds his head and announced "The clues are within HERE!".

And that's kind of the summary of these cases, where Poirot is the calm eye of the storm, quietly, patiently solving all manner of outlandish mysteries. Or just about managing to unmask yet another fake servant without rolling his eyes.

NEXT: Miss Marple solves The Thirteen Problems

Poirot's Early Cases (1974)

Plot: A book of short stories from Poirot's early days


This is a 1974 collection of Poirot stories from the 20s and 30s - so during "The Golden Period" between The Mysterious Affair At Styles and Poirot's retirement where the TV series plonks itself firmly.

As a collection this sees Poirot and Hastings established pretty much in the Holmes and Watson mould that they can also be glimpsed in in The Big Four. Several cases feature Poirot behaving rather more like Holmes than normal - The Veiled Lady is a perfect example of this, featuring as it does a veiled visitor who is not all she appears (how Victorian!), a Charles Augustus Milverton-style of blackmail, and even Poirot entering a house in disguise.

Also in this category are The Market Basing Mystery (a locked-room suicide), the LeMesurier Inheritance (an country estate falls under an ancient curse) , The Double Clue (robberies and mysterious nobles), and The Submarine Plans (Christie's version of The Bruce Partington Plans). That's not to knock these stories - they're all rather fine adventures, and The Double Clue even introduces us to Poirot's Irene Adler, Countess Vera, the charming jewel-thief.

At the risk of making this entry full of lists, we move rather more with the times in stories like The Victory Ball, with its bright young things mingling murder and cocaine, The King Of Clubs (in which The Casting Couch collides with suburbia), and Double Sin, which is marvellous fun all about the tourist charabanc. Perhaps the most period piece is Problem At Sea, which features the dreadful Young Gals Kitty and Pamela with their plans to "rescue" dull guests. How ripping!

The Adventure of the Clapham Cook sees Poirot venture very much into the modern suburbs, where, much affronted, he sweeps aside the airs of the middle class and realises that this is basically A Servant Problem caused by too much gullible reading of sensational magazines.

Wasp's Nest is interesting as it shows Poirot preventing a murder, and even tipping a chemical into a fellow's drink. It's a neat counterpoint to The Cornish Mystery which sees Poirot on the scene just a moment too late, and bitterly resentful of this fact. The latter story also features the monster of gossip (which we'll see again in the similar Many Headed Hydra section of The Labours of Hercules).

The Adventure Of The Third Floor Flat has its fascinations. It's very much a period piece about Darling Pat and the men around her, but we do learn that Poirot leases his flat in the name of "Mr O'Connor", and the mystery itself is Really Very Clever, even if it betray's Christie's cynicism about charing men and wide-eyed women.

The Lost Mine is almost an antidote to The Big Four, neatly spoofing that book's sinister Chinese dens and mysterious forces. The Chocolate Box is fascinating in that it purports to show one of Poirot's Failures, but even here, the old rogue can't resist showing off.

The Plymouth Express is in some ways a dry run for The Adventure Of The Blue Train which is, in turn, a dry run for Murder On The Orient Express. It does feature a criminal called "Red Narky", so for that alone, we forgive it anything. "How Does Your Garden Grow?" is similarly a pre-echo of Dumb Witness, and The Victory Ball (with its impersonations, actresses, cocaine and murder) is something of a precursor to Lord Edgware Dies.

Poirot is a sprightly delight throughout. Picking out a sentence at random "'The shoes were all wrong,' said Poirot dreamily" shows the fun that Christie is having both with her mystery and with her detective. If Hastings is sillier than Watson, Poirot is absurder than Holmes, and yet, somehow warmer and more human. What pervades these stories is both a cynicism about, and yet a delight in, human nature.

I'll leave you with the truly bizarre original paperback cover:


Next: More of the same in Poirot Investigates

Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960)

Plot: A collection of "two main courses and a selection of entrees".


Short stories - some reprints from much earlier, one a rewrite, one an old story with a new title. Only the first story is "Christmassy" - Poirot is invited down to spend Christmas and unmask a jewel thief in a country house. In many ways this story is a pastische of what people think an Agatha Christie mystery to be - country house, bright young things, complications, impostors, glamorous thieves, lots of snow and servants, a dead body, a taint of international intrigue and a twist or two.

It's notable for showing Poirot staging a crime which is also a rather macabre practical joke. The other thing this isn't really is a "whodunnit" since it turns out that the thief is, er, well, pretty much who it was supposed to be all along.

It is the first story in the collection to feature disguise and assumed identity - an idea which is played out again in The Under Dog, and then rather more dramatically in The Dream, Four-And-Twenty Blackbirds, and Greenshaw's Folly. In fact, the shame of these last three stories is that the trick in each case is identical. Admittedly they're very different stories, but you wonder if Poirot spent his entire life surrounded by people in false whiskers.

The Dream is a very interesting story in that it places Poirot up against the supernatural. This is a terrible idea on the crook's part, as Poirot cannot accept an impossible explanation, and therefore solves the crime. It's also a match between the villain and Poirot's vanity - and there's no doubt who can win this one.

Servants underpin both The Under Dog and The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding. In the latter, Poirot receives a warning from a worried maid, in the first Poirot finds himself trying to rationally solve a murder while Lady Astwell jumps up and down pointing at a hapless secretary and denouncing him based only on feminine intuition.

The Under Dog and The Dream are both classic "House of Evil" adventures in miniature - a dead and unpleasant businessman, impostors, put-upon secretaries, a not-exactly grieving family.

These tropes rear their head again in Greenshaw's Folly, a Miss Marple story that features a strange house, its eccentric owner, resentful housekeeper, wretched gardener, locked door mysteries, a policeman, lost relatives, and a fair amount of disguise. It also, remarkably, features a divorced woman who is employed as a secretary. There's also a very strange sense of the story heading in one direction and then turning in another (there's a lot of mention early on about clocks and hidden treasure), but this may just be misdirection from the mystery here being remarkably similar to two other stories in the collection. In many ways the story fits in much better in "Miss Marple's Final Cases", an anthology which allows Miss M to shine, and where the mysteries are sufficiently different to prevent the reader from groaning "not again". Especially as you have Miss Marple solving the mystery by magic and also dropping the wonderful line "When I was a girl, Inspector, nobody mentioned the word Stomach."

Finally there's The Adventure of the Spanish (Baghdad) Chest. Which is a weird and satisfying blend of Othello and Rope, mixed in with a truly gruesome method of murder that's curiously like something out of Edgar Allen Poe. It's curiously like a stage play, and isn't really so much a mystery as a poisonous puzzle box.

Next: More short stories with Poirot's Early Cases

Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938)

Plot: A yuletide death in the family fails to bring comfort and joy.


Merry Christmas! Towards the end of her career, Agatha Christie books were published as "A Christie for Christmas". In the 1960s, when her output slowed, her publishers tactfully let it be known that they'd let her off the hook and publish a "Ngaio Marsh for Christmas". The result was By The Pricking Of My Thumbs by return of post.

Even today, Christie adaptations glut the festive schedules - it seems we all love a good murder and a mince pie, and the nostalgic world that Christie evokes seems as much a part of the myth of Christmas as roaring fires, carol singing, snow and mince pies.

Viewed nostalgically, it seems surprising that more Christies aren't set at Christmas. There is, I think, this book, a Poirot short story and the first Harley Quinn mystery sees in the New Year. And that's about it.

Oddly, Hercule Poirot's Christmas is not a very Christmassy book. The Sittaford Mystery is at least snowier - indeed, the lack of Christmas decorations forms a late plot point, when Pilar Estravadors discovers them in a cupboard and comments on her expectations of "the crackers and the burning raisins and those shiny things on a tree..."

Christmas is simply an excuse for wicked old Simeeon Lee to gather his family around him - yes, it's the good old country House of Evil again, with the miserable live-in relatives, the exotic strangers from abroad, the returning prodigals, and curious servants, mixed in with impostors and spongers. This is pretty much the set-up of A Pocket Full of Rye, bolted onto the structure of a typical Poirot (death-interrogation-revelation).

If it all feels a little staged, this turns out to be part of Christie's plan. She even allows a character to comment "this is one of those damned cases you get in detective stories where a man is killed in a locked room". The reader will even spot the point, two-thirds in, where Poirot solves the murder and simply treads water until it's time to reveal the solution.

That this is a "locked room" murder is actually quite extraordinary in Christie's work. She adores the impossible mystery, but normally avoids the obvious impossibility of the locked room, leaving those to Carter Dickson. That she's chosen to employ this device is very deliberate here - she is throwing the reader's mind to thinking "how did the villain commit this crime and escape" rather than "why was the room locked in the first place?"

The whole thing is an elaborate sleight, which becomes quite easy to resolve once you realise who the murderer is. This is theoretically quite easy in this book - Simeon Lee drops several unconscious hints before his demise which Christie frequently reinforces - but in practice you may well miss it because it's just not where you're looking.

Again this is down to Christie. By the end you realise that this book is deliberately formulaic - the old house, the sequential interrogations, and other trusty bits of Christie's false machinery all wheeled out to keep you baffled.

This is helped by the book's mostly pallid characterisation. It's quite easy to forget who is who among the Lee clan (oh! so many brothers and wives). Christie even jogs your elbow by introducing Pilar Estravados, Lee granddaughter, who is the most striking woman in the book. So wonderfully radiant is Pilar that it makes the other Lee women very dull indeed, and even casts most of the men into shadow. Pilar is magnificently unBritish and unsentimental - she likes Simeon Lee, despite his immorality, she is unabashed about her selfishness, and isn't ashamed to be an adventuress, which throws her up against the book's two returning colonials, who are again rather less interesting.

Pilar, indeed, draws so much attention that the book becomes a did she/didn't she. If she did, then it's disappointing, but if she didn't, then who could possibly be as satisfying a villain? So bright is her star that it's impossible to forget that, as everyone admits, she had nothing to gain by killing Simeon Lee. Or did she, after all?

At the end of it all, Hercule Poirot's Christmas is a great example of what appears to be a by-the-numbers work by a master of the genre, but is, in fact, rather more than that.

Next: Yuletide merrymaking continues with The Adventure Of The Christmas Pudding

Hickory Dickory Dock (1955)

PLOT: Student flatshare - Bizarre thefts, death by poisoning, rucksacks and racism. It's the 1950s version of This Life


This is both the most racist and the least racist Christie I've read by far. Set in a shared student house with a clutch of international students, owned by the vile Greek Mrs Nicoletis, there are several sentences that make you wince, such as Mrs Nicoletis's first rant ("as for these coloured ones - scram!"). We meet the student known "affectionately" as Black Bess, and the gentle Mr Akibombo, and there's even the ghastly Nigel, who is probably a gay. He's not quite the mincing horror from Murder Is Easy, but he's always laughing and shrieking and spreading marmalade on toast in the middle of a crisis. And if that isn't a sign of a wendy, then I don't know what is.

Poirot muddles through admirably. As a foreigner himself he avoids the worst of it, but there are a fair few clumps of outdated terms and unsympathetic characters. In amongst all this is a fascinating portrait of shared student housing - and a remarkably mixed, accepting lot they are if you remember that at the time many boarding houses had signs outside saying "No Dogs, No Irish, No Blacks". But still... this isn't an easy read at times.

It's the stray details that disturb. I think we're meant to loathe Mrs Nicoletis, and not to like the vile Chandra Lal, and we're supposed to think fondly of Mr Akibombo, who appears to go out on dates with one character even though she actually falls for someone else, even though she does ask him to her wedding. It's just the occasional descriptions of the poor man - sometimes he's quite eloquent, other times he's like the Um-Bongo commercial. And then there are lines like "Akibombo nodded an enthusiastic black woolly head and showed his white teeth in a pleased smile", which is as close to Bo-Jo's dreaded "picaninny smiles" as you would want to get.

But this isn't actually a story about racism. It is about love. And Poirot "suddenly felt very tired of love", when he clears up an initial mystery, which turns out to be about a student turning kleptomaniac in order to gain the interest of the psychology student she loves. This all goes horribly wrong, and soon there's an impressively high body count.

By the end it's all quite curious. Some things are resolved and some things aren't - the mysterious smuggling ring, for example either does, or does not work out neatly. A few people fall in love, and some real nastiness is revealed. It's a great read, but at the same time, there's that troubling question of "Is Christie simply being honest about her times and is she actually quite liberal for them?" remains.

Five Little Pigs (1942)

PLOT: Poirot is asked to solve a murder that took place 16 years ago, and does so by talking to the five witnesses. A lot.



There's a despicable kind of person who apparently can't resist flicking to the end of a detective novel just to know who did it. Five Little Pigs is that remarkable thing, a book which feel like you needn't to bother.

I'm not claiming any amazing deductive powers here. This is a book that, from a handful of pages in, pretty much screams the name of the villain. The clues are dropped in so obviously they may as well be printed in bold italic with a bit of underlining. But are things really that simple? Even if they're just red herrings, should they be painted such a bright shade of scarlet?

It's a peculiar book all in. Perhaps I'm just saying that because knowing who did it in this case knocks so much of the stuffing out of it. You can, you should, re-read Murder of Roger Ackroyd knowing who did it. But this is one where, from the very first, you don't even detect cunning misdirection, so much as a giant arrow hanging over the perpetrator whenever their name is mentioned. And if it doesn't turn out to be them, then it's an absolutely massive cheat.

In terms of approach it is similar to Josephine Tey's Daughter Of Time, in that it unleashes a detective on a long-ago crime. Poirot must pick his way through recollection and written statements, overturning accepted fact and revealing a deeper psychological truth. Or, if you prefer, Poirot must kick his heels for a couple of hundred pages before revealing the bleeding obvious.

Without the narrative veneer of Hastings, we do get a remarkable insight into the detective's methods. We see him deciding when to "play the foreigner", by turns flattering, deceiving, or applying rigorous candour. We see him carefully, ingeniously cultivating the trust of suspects, of relaying half of a truth in the hopes of securing revelation.

We also see more of Poirot's mind. The book is mostly about the careful interrogation of five suspects - and we see how, powerfully, Poirot doesn't care for any of them very much. Whereas Miss Marple loves people for all their weaknesses, Poirot sees each suspect merely as a type and works on them accordingly.

In many books the human centre is Hastings. In this book it is the cameo of the victims' daughter, all grown up. Everyone else is merely fodder for Poirot's mental machinery. Poor Clara Lemarchant - a wild artist for a father and an equally precarious mother, damned by everyone. Even Clara, determined to vindicate her, says "I wasn't, I don't think, especially fond of her".

The art of the book lies in delicately layering and relayering Clara's idea of her parents. Sometimes we see them as vile grotesques, at others as deeply human and interesting for all of their flaws. Sometimes we side with the mother, sometimes with the father, frequently with their friends, and even occasionally with the wily girl intent on destroying their marriage.

The problem is that, just as Poirot doesn't like any of them very much, neither do we. There's some remarkable psychology at work, but also a sneaking suspicion that Agatha Christie herself doesn't care for any of them either.

It is a cold book. There's little of Christie's trademark humour and warmth. Sometimes, reading these books, you think what fun it would be to meet these people. But not this one - you get an impression of awkward meals, gin and door-slamming.

It is at its most remarkable when it offers portraits of the survivors - such as Lord and Lady Dittisham in their cold, luxurious palace. If Lord Dittisham is a poet without human sympathy, his wife is a statue robbed of a soul.

While I've said the structure is remarkable, it's actually a twist on the route often taken by Ngaio Marsh, where the crime takes place and then is narrated from several points of view by witnesses before the detective sees the way through the woods. And, oddly, just as the heart sinks slightly when you realise you're reading one of the duller Ngaio Marsh novels, there's a similar feeling that hangs over Five Little Pigs - it is a book held prisoner in its structure. It's especially dispiriting when, Poirot having interviewed all five suspects, he then reviews their five written accounts. "Oh no, not again," you groan - even though it's a great exercise in different narrative voices, and is also stripping the detective novel down to its bare essentials - five subtly conflicting narratives. Five little pigs. One porkie pie.

Curiously, Christie will return to the "nostalgia murder" approach a couple of times - including in the late, problematic Poirot adventure, Elephants Can Remember. It's as though she's trying to solve not a murder, but a structure. Somewhere in this, she is thinking, is the key to a brilliant mystery novel. Maybe I've not quite got it yet, but I'll have another go...

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940)

PLOT: Someone really doesn't like dentists.


This book is about remarkable coincidence. You can buy that a murder happens whenever Poirot goes on holiday, just as Jessica Fletcher's friends probably check in with their solicitors every time she announces she's dropping round.

By now, of course, you'd assume that if you were planning a murder and you realise that Poirot is on holiday with you, you'd have second thoughts. Similarly, if you're a rich heiress with a persecution complex and Poirot turns up, you'd either jump off the train or summon a priest.

At first glance, this book takes that on the chin. Poirot isn't on safari but mundanely at the dentist. This is an everyday creepy setting and a great place for a murder... but...

The chain of coincidence that this book then requires is remarkable.

• Poirot has a dentist. Fine.
  
• He shares this dentist with the most powerful financial brain in Britain. Also fine - after all, why not specialise in clever teeth?
  
• Although one of your clients is Miss Sainsbury Seale, who is very dim.
  
• And she just happens to know a powerful secret.
  
• She also just happens to have met a powerful blackmailer who just happens to have toothache.

So, just a few pages in, remarkable machinery has been set in motion and the murderer is presented with a most remarkable opportunity that will change the country's future. It's too good to miss. But, and you should remember this... this is also Poirot's dentist!

For the book to succeed, and it does succeed, Christie lays on top of this coincidence a remarkable number of layers of complexity.

So, as well as the dentist at the centre of the universe we have impostors, super secret spies, mysterious organisations, false telegrams and suspicious fiancees as well as at least one death which is almost motiveless.

This is a book stuffed full of herrings, some of them painted a magnificent red which is patiently washed off by Poirot, leaving you, by the end, aware that the book is about something you really didn't think it could be about.

The framing device of the nursery rhyme adds to the splendid conclusion - it has almost nothing to do with the story, and yet, by the end, you realise it has everything to do with the solution.

The book also re-poses the question of necessary murder to Poirot. Is there such a thing as a crime that is so important that justice cannot be brought? Not in Poirot's eyes. Curiously, the ITV adaptation implies that, by making this choice, Poirot causes the second world war. Which seems a little unfair.