Black Coffee by Agatha Christie
Of note: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd broke all the rules of detective fiction and made Agatha Christie a household name. Widely regarded as her masterpiece (though perhaps it may be called her ‘Poirot masterpiece’ since other titles in her canon — notably And Then There Were None — are similarly acclaimed), The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the source of some controversy when it was published. The Times Literary Supplement’s praise of the first Poirot, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, ‘almost too ingenious,’ was applied by scores of readers to Ackroyd, who were nonetheless enraptured by the novel, and have remained so over the decades.
Fair warning: There are two things you must do if you know nothing of the book: discuss it with no one, and read it with all speed.
H.R.F. Keating: ‘One of the landmarks of detective literature’ (in his Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books).
Julian Symons: ‘The most brilliant of deceptions’ (in his Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel).
Irish Independent: ‘A classic — the book has worthily earned its fame.’
5. The Big Four (1927)
Hercule Poirot is preparing for a voyage to South America. Looming in the doorway of his bedroom is an uninvited guest, coated from head to foot in dust and mud. The man’s gaunt face registers Poirot for a moment, and then he collapses. The stranger recovers long enough to identify Poirot by name and madly and repeatedly scribble the figure ‘4’ on a piece of paper. Poirot cancels his trip. An investigation is in order. Fortunately, Poirot has the faithful Captain Hastings at his side as he plunges into a conspiracy of international scope — one that would consolidate power in the deadly cabal known as ‘The Big Four.’
6. The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)
Le Train Bleu is an elegant, leisurely means of travel, and one certainly free of intrigue. Hercule Poirot is aboard, bound for the Riviera. And so is Ruth Kettering, the American heiress. Bailing out of a doomed marriage, she is en route to reconcile with her former lover. But her private affairs are made quite public when she is found murdered in her luxury compartment — bludgeoned almost beyond recognition. Fans of the later novel Murder on the Orient Express will not want to miss this journey by rail — and Poirot’s eerie reenactment of the crime...
7. Black Coffee (1930; 1998)
Sir Claud Amory’s formula for a powerful new explosive has been stolen, presumably by a member of his large household. Sir Claud assembles his suspects in the library and locks the door, instructing them that the when the lights go out, the formula must be replaced on the table — and no questions will be asked. But when the lights come on, Sir Claud is dead. Now Hercule Poirot, assisted by Captain Hastings and Inspector Japp, must unravel a tangle of family feuds, old flames, and suspicious foreigners to find the killer and prevent a global catastrophe.
Of note: Black Coffee was Agatha Christie’s first playscript, written in 1929. It premiered in 1930 at the Embassy Theatre in Swiss Cottage, London, before transferring the following year to St Martin’s in the West End — a theatre made famous by virtue of its becoming the permanent home of the longest-running play in history, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. Agatha Christie’s biographer, Charles Osborne, who, as a young actor in 1956 had played Dr Carelli in a Tunbridge Wells production of Black Coffee, adapted the play as this novel in 1998.
Antonia Fraser, Sunday Telegraph: ‘A lively and light-hearted read which will give pleasure to all those who have long wished that there was just one more Christie to devour.’
Mathew Prichard, from his Foreword to Black Coffee: ‘This Hercule Poirot murder mystery ... reads like authentic, vintage Christie. I feel sure Agatha would be proud to have written it.’
8. Peril at End House (1932)
Nick is an unusual name for a pretty young woman. And Nick Buckley has been leading an unusual life of late. First, on a treacherous Cornish hillside, the brakes on her car fail. Then, on a coastal path, a falling boulder misses her by inches. Safe in bed, she is almost crushed by a painting. Upon discovering a bullet hole in Nick’s sun hat, Hercule Poirot (who had come to Cornwall for a simple holiday with his friend Captain Hastings) decides that the girl needs his protection. At the same time, he begins to unravel the mystery of a murder that hasn’t been committed. Yet.
Times Literary Supplement: ‘Ingenious.’
9. Lord Edgware Dies (1933)
Poirot was present when the beautiful actress Jane Wilkinson bragged of her plan to ‘get rid of ’ her estranged husband. Now the monstrous man is dead. But how could Jane have stabbed Lord Edgware in his library at exactly the time she was dining with friends? And what could have been her motive, since Edgware had finally granted her a divorce? The great Belgian detective, aided by Captain Hastings, can’t help feeling that some kind of heinous stagecraft is in play. And does more murder wait in the wings?
The New York Times: ‘A most ingenious crime puzzle.’
Times Literary Supplement: ‘The whole case is a triumph of Poirot’s special qualities.’
Noted crime fiction critic Julian Symons selected Lord Edgware Dies as one of Agatha Christie’s best.
10. Murder on the Orient Express (1934)
Just after midnight, a snowstorm stops the Orient Express dead in its tracks in the middle of Yugoslavia. The luxurious train is surprisingly full for this time of year. But by morning there is one passenger less. A ‘respectable American gentleman’ lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside... Hercule Poirot is also aboard, having arrived in the nick of time to claim a second-class compartment — and the most astounding case of his illustrious career.
Regarding chronology: Agatha Christie seems not much concerned in the course of her books with their relationship to each other. It is why the Marples and the Poirots may be ready in any order, really, with pleasure. However, the dedicated Poirotist may wish to note that the great detective is returning from ‘A little affair in Syria’ at the start of Murder on the Orient Express. It is a piece of business after this ‘little affair’ — the investigation into the death of an archaeologist’s wife — that is the subject of Murder in Mesopotamia (1936). If one wishes to delay a tad longer the pleasures of Orient Express, Murder in Mesopotamia offers no better opportunity.
Fair warning: Along these lines, it is advisable that one not read Cards on the Table (1936) prior to Orient Express, since Poirot himself casually gives away the ending to the latter novel.
Of note: Murder on the Orient Express is one of Agatha Christie’s most famous novels, owing no doubt to a combination of its romantic setting and the ingeniousness of its plot; its non-exploitative reference to the sensational kidnapping and murder of the infant son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh only two years prior; and a popular 1974 film adaptation, starring Albert Finney as Poirot — one of the few cinematic versions of a Christie work that met with the approval, however mild, of the author herself.
Dorothy L. Sayers, Sunday Times: ‘A murder mystery conceived and carried out on the finest classical lines.’
Saturday Review of Literature: ‘Hard to surpass.’
Times Literary Supplement: ‘Need it be said — the little grey cells solve once more the seemingly insoluble. Mrs Christie makes an improbable tale very real, and keeps her readers enthralled and guessing to the end.’
11. Three-Act Tragedy (1935)
The novel opens as a theatre programme, with this telling credit: ‘Illumination by HERCULE POIROT.’ Light must be shed, indeed, on the fateful dinner party staged by the famous actor Sir Charles Cartwright for thirteen guests. It will be a particularly unlucky evening for the mild-mannered Reverend Stephen Babbington, whose martini glass, sent for chemical analysis after he chokes on its contents and dies, reveals no trace of poison. Just as there is no apparent motive for his murder. The first scene in a succession of carefully staged killings, but who is the director?
The New York Times: ‘Makes for uncommonly good reading.’
12. D
From seat No. 9, Hercule Poirot is almost ideally placed to observe his fellow air travelers on this short flight from Paris to London. Over to his right sits a pretty young woman, clearly infatuated with the man opposite. Ahead, in seat No. 13, is the Countess of Horbury, horribly addicted to cocaine and not doing too good a job of concealing it. Across the gangway in seat No. 8, a writer of detective fiction is being troubled by an aggressive wasp. Yes, Poirot is almost ideally placed to take it all in — except that the passenger in the seat directly behind him has slumped over in the course of the flight... dead. Murdered. By someone in Poirot’s immediate proximity. And Poirot himself must number among the suspects.
Times Literary Supplement: ‘It will be a very acute reader who does not receive a complete surprise at the end.’
13. The ABC Murders (1936)
Captain Arthur Hastings returns to narrate this account of a personal challenge made to ‘Mr Clever Poirot’ by a killer who identifies himself as ‘ABC’ and who leaves the ABC Rail Guide next to his victims — apparently intending to work through the English countryside (he has struck in Andover, Bexhill-on-Sea, and Churston) and exercise Poirot along the way. Serialized in London’s Daily Express, The ABC Murders became a cultural phenomenon as readers were invited to try to keep up with the famous Belgian detective. It is a challenge that remains fresh and thrilling to this day — and makes The ABC Murders one of the absolute must-reads of the Christie canon.
Julian Symons: ‘A masterwork of carefully concealed artifice… most stunningly original.’
Sunday Times: ‘There is no more cunning player of the murder game than Agatha Christie.’
14. Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)
Nurse Amy Leatheran had never felt the lure of the ‘mysterious East,’ but she nonetheless accepts an assignment at Hassanieh, an ancient site deep in the Iraqi desert, to care for the wife of a celebrated archaeologist. Mrs Leidner is suffering bizarre visions and nervous terror. ‘I’m afraid of being killed!’ she admits to her nurse. Her terror, unfortunately, is anything but unfounded, and Nurse Leatheran is soon enough without a patient. The world’s greatest detective happens to be in the vicinity, however: having concluded an assignment in Syria, and curious about the dig at Hassanieh, Hercule Poirot arrives in time to lead a murder investigation that will tax even his remarkable powers — and in a part of the world that has seen more than its share of misadventure and foul play.
The New York Times: ‘Smooth, highly original, and completely absorbing.’
15. Cards on the Table (1936)
‘The deduction,’ Agatha Christie writes in her Foreword to this volume, ‘must ... be entirely psychological ... because when all is said and done it is the mind of the murderer that is of supreme interest.’ There is probably no neater encapsulation of what makes Agatha Christie’s works so fresh, so fascinating, so many years after they were written. And this statement appropriately opens the novel that is regarded as Agatha Christie’s most singularly challenging mystery — it is, in fact, Hercule Poirot’s own favourite case.
Poirot is one of eight dinner guests of the flamboyant Mr Shaitana. The other invitees are Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard (introduced in The Secret of Chimneys); Secret Service agent Colonel Race (who first appeared in The Man in the Brown Suit); Mrs Ariadne Oliver, a famous author of detective stories (introduced in Parker Pyne Investigates and who will figure in five more Poirots) — and four suspected murderers. After dinner, there will be a few rounds of bridge: the four investigators playing at one table; the four murder suspects at another. Mr Shaitana will sit by the fire and observe. This he does — until he is stabbed to death. The ultimate ‘closed-room murder mystery’ awaits the intrepid reader. Who is the murderer? And who will solve the crime?
Fair warning: Poirot casually reveals the solution to Murder on the Orient Express in Cards on the Table.
Daily Mail: ‘The finest murder story of her career… Mrs Christie has never been more ingenious.’
16. Murder in the Mews (1937)
In the title work in this collection of novellas, Poirot and Inspector Japp collaborate on the investigation of a suspicious suicide. The supernatural is said to play in the disappearance of top secret military plans in The Incredible Theft — an incredible claim, indeed, as Poirot will prove. The bullet that kills Gervase Chevenix-Gore shatters a mirror in Dead Man’s Mirror — just the clue Poirot needs to solve the crime. And, while basking on white Mediterranean sands, Poirot stares trouble in the face — the beautiful face of Valentine Chantry, now celebrating her fifth marriage — in Triangle at Rhodes.
Daily Mail: ‘All four tales are admirable entertainment… Mrs Christie’s solutions are unexpected and satisfying.’
17. Dumb Witness (1937)
Agatha Christie wrote this mystery for dog lovers. She was certainly one herself, dedicating the novel to her own pet. Captain Arthur Hastings, in his penultimate Poirot appearance (like Poirot, Curtain will be his last), again takes up narrative duties — along with, remarkably, the eponymous Bob, a wire-haired terrier who, upon careful inspection, declares Poirot ‘not really a doggy person.’ But Poirot is present to inquire into the natural-seeming death of Bob’s mistress, Miss Emily Arundell. Natural-seeming, except that Miss Emily had written Poirot of her suspicions that a member of her family was trying to kill her: a letter Poirot received too late — in fact, two months too late — to help. Poirot and Bob will sniff out the murderer nonetheless (and Bob will win a happy new home, with Captain Hastings who is, most decidedly, a ‘doggy person’).
Fair warning: Dumb Witness is best read after The Mysterious Affair at Styles; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; The Mystery of the Blue Train; and Death in the Clouds — since the identity of the criminal in each is revealed in this novel.
Glasgow Herald: ‘One of Poirot’s most brilliant achievements.’
18. Death on the Nile (1937)
Among the best-loved of Agatha Christie’s novels, Death on the Nile finds Hercule Poirot again trying to enjoy a vacation — this time aboard the S.S. Karnak, steaming between the First and Second Cataracts of the Nile, with stops at sites of archaeological significance. But Poirot (who, after all, had attempted to retire years before) seems to be perennially unlucky in his choice of holidays. Newlywed Linnet Ridgeway is, in the course of the journey, shot dead in the head, and Poirot has before him a boatload of suspects — and a useful sidekick in Colonel Race of the British Secret Service.
Of note: The producers of Murder on the Orient Express released a film version, also well received (though not by Mrs Christie, who had passed away two years prior), of Death on the Nile (1978), this time casting Peter Ustinov as Poirot.
Daily Mail (of the novel): ‘Flawless.’
19. Appointment with Death (1938)
‘“I’m so sorry,” she said... “Your mother is dead, Mr Boynton.” And curiously, as though from a great distance, she watched the faces of five people to whom that announcement meant freedom...’
We have returned to the Middle East with Hercule Poirot, on our most colourful tour yet: to the Dome of the Rock, the Judean desert, the Dead Sea, and to Petra, ‘the rose-red city,’ that ancient place of heart-stopping beauty — but also of heart-stopping horror, for here sits the corpse of old Mrs Boynton, monstrous matriarch, loathed by one and all. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist is the only sign of the fatal injection that killed her. With only twenty-four hours available to solve the mystery, Hercule Poirot recalls a chance remark he’d overheard back in Jerusalem: ‘You see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?’
The Observer: ‘Twice as brilliant as Death on the Nile, which was entirely brilliant.’
20. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (1938)
This novel was the author’s gift to her brother-in-law, who had complained that her stories were, for him, ‘too academic.’ What he desired was a ‘good violent murder with lots of blood.’ From the epigraph — a quotation from Macbeth —
It is Christmas Eve. The Lee family reunion, never a lively affair, is interrupted by a deafening crash and a high-pitched scream. The tyrannical head of the Lee family, Simeon, lies dead in a pool of blood, his throat slashed. Hercule Poirot is spending the holidays with his friend Colonel Johnson, the chief constable of the local village. At the Lee house he finds an atmosphere not of mourning but of mutual suspicion. Christmas with family — survive it this year with Hercule Poirot.
Fair warning: In an exchange between Poirot and Colonel Johnson, the solution of Three-Act Tragedy is revealed.
21. Sad Cypress (1940)
Beautiful, young Elinor Carlisle stands serenely in the dock, accused of the murder of Mary Gerrard, her rival in love. The evidence is damning: only Elinor had the motive, the opportunity, and the means to administer the fatal poison. Inside the hostile courtroom, one man is all that stands between Elinor and the gallows — Hercule Poirot.
Daily Mail: ‘Poirot solves another exciting case.’
Charles Osborne, Agatha Christie’ biographer: ‘One of the most real, least schematic of crime novels. It is also unusual in that it employs the device of the possible miscarriage of justice ... And it works superbly as a murder mystery.’
22. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940)
‘Nineteen, twenty, my plate’s empty.’ But the reader’s plate is full indeed, as Hercule Poirot must follow a familiar nursery rhyme through a course of murder. The adventure is kicked off by the apparent suicide of a Harley Street dentist — who would also appear to have murdered one of his patients. Hercule Poirot has himself been this dentist’s patient on this very day, and suspects foul play. A shoe buckle holds the key to the mystery. But — five, six — will Poirot pick up sticks, and — seven, eight — lay them straight... before a murderer can strike again?