The Big Four
Crime, Mystery
Agatha Christie
Hercule Poirot, Book # 5
HarperCollinsPublishers
January 27th 1927
Paperback
272
English
December 11, 2020 December 17, 2020
Framed in the doorway of Poirot’s bedroom stood an uninvited guest, coated from head to foot in dust. The man’s gaunt face stared for a moment, then he swayed and fell. Who was he? Was he suffering from shock or just exhaustion? Above all, what was the significance of the figure 4, scribbled over and over again on a sheet of paper? Poirot finds himself plunged into a world of international intrigue, risking his life to uncover the truth about ‘Number Four’.
About the book
The Big Four is the fifth book in the series. Hastings returns from South America and finds Poirot leaving. By a fortuitous event Poirot is leaving for South America pushed by a rich man to accept a case overseas. The arrival of Hastings blocks everything. Poirot realises that there is an organisation that is trying to get rid of him in order to dominate the world. This organisation is called The Big Four.
Amidst various murders and incidents Poirot realises that all are linked by these four individuals and tries to find their identity.
What I think
I liked the book, a little less than the fourth one because here I immediately understood how things would go (and I will explain why later), but it’sl not bad. How certain ideas came to Christie I don’t know… but I like them.
I will continue with the series in the new year even if I don’t think I can finish it in 2021 : D
Discussion With Spoiler, don’t read if you haven’t read the book!
The only thing I didn’t like is that Christie gives a clear hint of how it all would turn out. The fact that Poirot has a twin and that Hercule himself says it in this book and then the staging was a little too easy to understand (and the fact that there are still about 40 books after this that are part of the series, it was obvious that Poirot was not dead). The fact that the Four did not have Hastings’ wife was also easy to understand from Poirot’s insistence on asking about the woman. Despite this, the book is not bad and I can also understand that at the beginning, when it was written, the reader would be a little scare that he was dead, since the other books had not yet been published.
Honestly, I don’t know the lake mentioned in the book and as you can see I’m Italian O_o .
2 coffees on “The Big Four”