The Big Four - Agatha Christie

This is more a series of mini-adventures than one single novel, in which Hercule Poirot and his devoted friend Hastings try to thwart the plans of an international gang known as the Big Four in the quest for world domination. Despite the global influence of these criminal masterminds, Poirot engages them in a war of minds and strategy that has likely deadly consequences.

The Big Four is one of the most unashamedly entertaining Christie novels I've read, with a Shakespearean penchant for unfathomable disguises, plenty of melodramatic grandstanding, and a few satirical digs at the conventions of mystery-writing.

Seen from the sidekick Hastings' point of view, the reader is kept in the dark for much of the novel, while being given plenty of clues to make guesses at the resolution. A fun, light-hearted read of a detective novel.

Next up: The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie (the last in this three-novel volume, and I'll move on to something different!)

Film adaptation - Murder on the Orient Express

I read the novel quite a while ago, so watching this adaptation was long overdue. I went for the classic David Suchet 1974 version, and I have to say I love the old-style use of dramatic music to highlight key moments. I also liked the slow pace, which reflects the steady information-gathering of the book, and makes a nice change from modern films and TV where the angle or scene cuts once every few seconds.

For me David Suchet is THE Poirot, and Murder on the Orient Express had plenty of the compassion and understated humour that comes across in the novels. The slower, lingering shots added a wonderful sense of atmosphere.

Appearances by many other talented actors and Christie's signature plot twists made this an entertaining and engaging film to watch, even knowing the ending already. Good gentle fun, a long way from more recent (in my opinion rather stressful) gritty realism.

Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie

Murder on the Orient Express seemed like apt reading material for the 6-hour train journey to my graduation ceremony at the weekend, although it did make me long for the lovely old-fashioned trains portrayed in the book, instead of the crowded, greasy and boiling hot ones I was stuck on at the time.

We begin with Hercule Poirot travelling back to London, after solving a case in Syria. He plans to break his journey for three days exploring Stamboul (or Istanbul, as we now know it), but receives an urgent telegraph to return home immediately. He bumps into a friend of his who happens to be a director of the railway company owning the Orient Express, who pulls some strings and gets him a last-minute berth in an unseasonably crowded train bound for London.

Once on the train, he meets a couple of his former travelling companions, who seem now to be avoiding one another, as well as making the acquaintance of the diverse range of other passengers on the carriage. After a day or two of travel, the train is halted by a snowdrift, and in the morning one of the passengers is discovered murdered. Trapped on a train with the murderer, and without the facility of telegramming for further information about his suspects, Poirot must puzzle out the identity of the culprit using his deductive powers alone.

As usual with Agatha Christie, the plot keeps you guessing throughout, and I felt rather smug at having spotted a pivotal clue at the time it happened. Naturally, the conclusion is rather contrived compared to modern, gritty detective dramas, but that’s one of the great things about Christie’s novels – you have the pleasant sensation of sitting safely outside the action, watching what’s going on and wondering about the solution.

Hercule Poirot’s warm, amiable character and strong sense of compassion and humour is also a nice contrast from other early detective fiction, for instance Sherlock Holmes’ cold intellectual logic. For Holmes each crime is simply a puzzle to be clinically solved and the culprit handed over to the authorities for justice, but Poirot sees each suspect as a human being, and uses this to his advantage when making his deductions.

Next up: Legend by David Gemmell