The ABC Murders

My wife and I listened to this book from beginning to end on a long car journey across the UK. It kept us entertained the entire way.

The quick, gentle humour in the book caught me by surprise. I loved the early interactions between Poirot, Hastings and Japp, where they discussed the small personal vanities that ageing brings to the fore.

The characters that we were introduced to as the murders progressed were drawn with swift deft strokes that brought them to life and gave insights into many different kinds of family and social circumstances. I was pleased by the empathy shown to all of the people involved. I greatly preferred this over the much judgemental tones found in the later Poirot books.

I particularly enjoyed the number of strong show more women in the story, all different in their circumstances and ambitions but all sharing traits of intelligence and pluck.

The ideas that drive the plot in this book: a serial killer communicating directly with a detective, a race to find and protect the next victim in the sequence, unearthing the killer's motivation in order to unmask their identity, would all have been shiny and new when it was published. Christie clearly set out to do something innovative, to the point where she has Poirot and Hastings playfully discussing the frustrations, improbabilities and constraints that characterised the detective fiction of the time, including Christie's own.

Even now, when the book has spawned a whole subgenre, the plot was engaging and kept me guessing almost until the end. The scenes that were not part of Hastings' personal narrative were very cleverly used to change the tone of the book, twist the plot and wind up the tension.

I'm probably in the minority in holding this view but I felt the weakest part of the book was the ending. After all the innovations in plot and narrative style, it was a little disappointing to end with a very traditional Big Reveal scene. The reveal worked well enough but it seemed to me to drag a little. I'd have liked to see some more original way of getting to the outcome.

Nevertheless, this stands up as an excellent mystery today and must have been mindblowing when it was published. show less

As characters in detective novels often say, it sounds like a crime out of a detective novel: a mysterious murderer known only as “A.B.C” is killing people whose names have the same initial as their town of residence (as in Alice Ascher of Andover), and leaving behind an A.B.C. railway guide as his calling card. He announces each murder beforehand to Hercule Poirot, daring him to solve the crime. Poirot is at a loss, and the body count accumulates…

This is one of my favourite Poirots. It is ingeniously plotted, and I like the use of chapters Not from Captain Hastings’ Personal Narrative to round out the story. It contains some of my favourite Poirot zingers, such as when Hastings says “I never notice what people have on” — show more Poirot says “Maybe you should join a nudist colony”. I can just picture Hugh Fraser with a dismayed look on his face!

For those who like Golden Age detective fiction, with the amateur sleuths and the semi-professional sleuths having the edge over the police, this is a fun entertainment. show less

Serial-killer stories and golden-age private detectives don't often intersect, for obvious reasons - tracking down a serial killer normally requires the kind of large-scale teamwork that makes police-procedurals so interesting. So Christie has to play a few tricks here to finagle Poirot into investigating a set-up that rapidly turns into a template for so many later serial-killer stories - victims widely separated in location, social class and personal situation, but linked by a bizarre "signature" element - in this case Alice Asscher in Andover, Betty Barnard in Bexhill, and so on, are all found with an "ABC Railway Guide" next to them.

The police steadily plough through the process of amassing clues, whilst Poirot focusses on what show more today's crime novelists would call the forensic psychology aspect of the case, trying to work out what it could be that motivates the killer. And of course has plenty of opportunities along the way for chaffing his sidekick, Captain Hastings, about the conventions of detective fiction. He pours particular scorn on the importance of the Clue, in particular the "curiously-twisted dagger" or the "little-known oriental poison". (And a few passing references along the way to past and future Poirot books.)

There's also a lot of interesting discussion calling into question our preconceptions about crime and madness - you can't help wondering if there's some biographical significance to the way the main suspect himself has a genuine doubt in his mind about whether or not he committed the crimes, bearing in mind Christie's high-profile fugue ten years earlier. But the seriousness of the discussions is a little undermined by the way characters seem to keep saying "homicidal murderer" when they presumably mean "homicidal maniac"...

Fun, even if not without a few big flaws, and I'm glad to have read it at last. And obviously an influential crime story, since it launched a major plot convention re-used by many other writers since. show less

**2018 UPDATE**
There's yet another unnecessary, unwanted remake of this book into a 3-part miniseries being made; John Malkovich will appear as Poirot, which is as ludicrous as that Brannagh dude and his mustachios appearing in the unnecessary, unwanted remake of [Murder on the Orient Express] that carbuncled itself onto screens last year.

Rupert Grint, of Harry Potter fame, will also appear. Amazon Prime will stream in the US, though I'm not sure about international markets. End of this year.

Why they can't leave it with David Suchet, who filmed all the Poirot stories in 25 years as the little Belgian, I cannot fathom. He **was** Poirot. *annoyed sigh*

2019 UPDATE I watched the Amazon Prime 3-part adaptation. It wasn't at all bad. I show more still think of Suchet as Poirot, but wasn't distracted by Malkovich in the role as I worried I might be. His Poirot is very different from the canonical one. Not bad, please understand, just different; his moustaches are infinitely preferable to the pogonotical heresy sported by Branagh in the recent feature film of Murder on the Orient Express.

There is a new, and divisive, backstory to the character; Malkovich's Belgian accent is superior to almost all the preceding efforts; the production was possessed of some annoying (to me) anachronisms (eg, a Woody Herman tune from 1939 being used in a 1933 setting, a china pattern I know from my years selling the stuff was introduced in 1960) but overall was beautifully conceived to convey the despair of the time.

I was inspired by the series to zip through the book again, and found it to be one of the top quality Christie efforts. Hastings, our narrator, has just returned from South America; he delivers us the the story with all the verve of Boswell reporting on Johnson's aperçus. Hastings is also, in the way of informing the reader, attempting to put himself in the head of the killer. It's not the ordinary run of the mill technique used in the Poirot books and I, for one, am pleased that's the case. It's not unsuccessful, exactly, to tell the story this way. It's obtrusive, and calls attention to the story as being told. So there one is, listening to one's rather dull cousin talking about how clever someone else is. It's not the smoothest reading experience, but it's quite effective as used in this particular story.

I was again struck by the great usefulness of Hastings as a narrator, and am sad to report that he is absent from this filmed version; Inspector Japp's fate, dealt with here in a cursory way, is at variance from the book; Cust's issues and their resolution are very much changed for no particular reason that I can see; and Rupert Grint's Inspector Crome is a nasty little man, eaten alive by jealousy and petty grievance. It was actually a perfect foil for Malkovich's performance.

So I'll eat my 2018 words and say this *isn't* an unnecessary and unwanted remake of the Suchet-era version (which, if I'm honest, isn't all that). It's a different, darker, and curiously unpleasant take on a top-flight Christie novel. show less

The A.B.C. Murders – Agatha Christie-
Audio performance by Hugh Fraser
4 stars

“Mr. Hercule Poirot,—You fancy yourself, don’t you, at solving mysteries that are too difficult for our poor thick-headed British police? Let us see, Mr Clever Poirot, just how clever you can be. Perhaps you’ll find this nut too hard to crack. Look out for Andover, on the 21st of the month. Yours, etc., A B C.”

A serial killer with an alphabetical compulsion sends mocking letters to Poirot announcing his intentions. Captain Hastings, temporarily returned to England from his South American ranchito, relates the story with occasional chapters labeled, ‘Not from Captain Hastings personal narrative’. And when will I ever learn ? With Agatha show more Christie it’s not ever the most likely suspect. Or is it? This mystery was a bit more suspenseful than some of the other Poirot stories. As usual it kept me guessing while I completed my mundane household chores. show less

“There is nothing so terrible as to live in an atmosphere of suspicion - to see eyes watching you and the love in them changing to fear - nothing so terrible as to suspect those near and dear to you - It is poisonous - a miasma.”

Hercule Poirot gets a few surprises – his old friend Hastings has come for an extended stay and visit, and a serial killer has decided to target him with teasing notes before he strikes.

As always, clever. The point of this one was the journey and not the destination/culprit. I didn't guess the killer exactly, it's complicated with this one, but there was a surprising twist that made a diabolical sense. Christie shows the viewpoint of the supposed culprit from the start. Poirot wasn’t trying to figure show more out who the killer was so much as he was trying to figure out a possible motive other than a ‘madman is doing it because he’s mad.’

It was a treat to see Poirot and Hastings meet up again when both are older and still friends - poor Hastings is apparently losing his hair, which makes one of several amusing moments. Their comical exchanges bring spice to the page - even if Hastings isn't the most fascinating character, their friendship is a joy in these books. He’s definitely grown to enjoy the sleuthing business more than he used to.

We don’t get into the head of the great detective this time, and Christie uses a multiple viewpoint between two people, but it works well.

The ABC Murders would make a clever movie adaptation – have they done it already? – although the mystery itself isn’t the strongest of her works. Poirot being there solving the puzzle makes it all the better – he’s definitely my favorite detective. He will live on. show less

Hercule Poirot receives a letter signed only “ABC,” which mocks his apparent cleverness and sets a riddle for him to solve: “Look out for Andover, on the 21st of the month.” Alas, Poirot does not respond quickly enough, and an elderly shopkeeper, Mrs. Ascher, is murdered in the town of Andover. And then Poirot receives a second letter involving a crime at Bexhill-on-Sea, and a girl named Betty Barnard is killed there. The murderer also leaves an A-B-C railway book at each murder scene, page open to the train schedule for vehicles going to the place of the murder. And then a third letter comes….This is an example of the Queen of Mystery’s variety of styles: although often the Poirot books are “narrated” by Captain show more Hastings, in this one his “narration” is interspersed with third-person chapters (albeit with Poirot’s blessing), so the reader knows more than the characters - or thinks she does, anyway. I’m not generally a fan of Poirot (except David Suchet’s rendition of the character, of course) because he’s such a pompous ass, but I enjoyed this one. And of course there’s no need to recommend Madame Christie’s books; one is either already a fan or ignorant of the mystery genre, after all! show less