Murder in retrospect: A Hercule Poirot mystery

by Agatha Christie

1970

Status

Checked out

Publication

Dell Pub. Co (1970), 192 pages

Description

Fiction. Mystery. Historical Fiction. HTML: In Agatha Christie's classic, Five Little Pigs, beloved detective Hercule Poirot races to solve a case from out of the past. Beautiful Caroline Crale was convicted of poisoning her husband, but just like the nursery rhyme, there were five other "little pigs" who could have done it: Philip Blake (the stockbroker), who went to market; Meredith Blake (the amateur herbalist), who stayed at home; Elsa Greer (the three-time divorcée), who had her roast beef; Cecilia Williams (the devoted governess), who had none; and Angela Warren (the disfigured sister), who cried all the way home. Sixteen years later, Caroline's daughter is determined to prove her mother's innocence, and Poirot just can't get that nursery rhyme out of his mind.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
Five Little Pigs, also known as Murder in Retrospect, is written by Agatha Christie and stars Hercule Poirot. I really enjoyed this interesting book. Poirot is approached by a young woman whose father was supposedly murdered by her mother sixteen years ago.. The young woman had only just found out
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about this on her recent 21st birthday and has asked Poirot to look back over the facts of the murder with his uncanny eye to hopefully come up with a different conclusion.

Pirot gathers the facts from the lawyers and the police that were involved in the case. He then interviews the five witnesses in order to get a sense of time and place. Of course each witness has their own slant on what actually happened, and Poirot must use his “little grey cells” to come up with the truth. In spectacular Agatha Christie style, the last chapter of the book finds Poirot gathering the witnesses together for his dramatic reveal.

Kudos to Miss Christie for keeping this book both fresh and interesting while we read about a murder from five different view points. I did solve the mystery, but I suggest that the author wanted us to work it out, to use our own ‘little grey cells” by simply meditating upon the testimony offered. An excellent read and one of my favorite Poirot stories yet.
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LibraryThing member DirtPriest
Five Little Pigs was the most interesting scenario of all the Christie mysteries I have read this summer, excepting The Labours of Hercules. A young lady asks Poirot to investigate her father's murder from when she was a young child, of which her mother was convicted and died in prison. Caroline,
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the mother, had written a letter expressing her innocence to her daughter, to be opened when she was 21. The way Poirot smooth-talked the five witnesses, suspects, piggies, whatever that were involved in the poisoning of a fairly famous painter was excellent. And the misleading trail of clues was a well planned trap. For once I thought I had actually solved a murder mystery using Poirot's methods, but I was wrong and overlooked a few clues. I did grasp some of the more nuanced clues and made inferences in the discrepancies of the 5 written testamonials that the monsieur collected for his, ahem, book he was consulting on. Oh well. I don't think the Chritie mysteries are meant to be solved as the clues are often written in misleading ways, and the fun is seeing how they are properly threaded together. I'm glad these books are rather short as I think I would quickly tire of one that was too long.
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LibraryThing member cmbohn
In this story, Poirot gets a chance to do something he's never done before - to solve a mystery without a single clue, simply by talking to the people who were involved.

Sixteen years ago, artist Amyas Crale was poisoned. His wife was arrested and convicted of murder. She wrote a letter to her young
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daughter saying she was innocent. Now the girl is grown and engaged to be married. But first she wants to know what really happened.

Poirot has little work with. He starts by talking to the lawyers on both sides of the case. Then he interviews the people who were on the scene - the five little pigs of the English title. The first pig was a business man, friend of Mr. Crale. The second was his brother, a country gentleman type. The next was the Other Woman, a Lady Dittisham, who has never forgiven or forgotten. The fourth little pig was the governess. And the last was the younger sister of Mrs. Crale. She alone is convinced of Caroline Crale's innocence. Everyone else believes she was guilty. Crale always had women around, but this time it looked as though he meant to divorce his wife and marry his mistress. But he was murdered before he got the chance.

Poirot convinces each of the five to write an account of the days up to the murder. By reading this accounts, he believes he will be able to reconstruct the crime and determine who was responsible for the death of Amyas Crale.

CMB
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LibraryThing member vanwinklee13
Agatha Cristie does a wonderful job balancing the emotions of all the characters throughout the story with the intense mystery surrounding everybody. The main character Hercule Poirot, a famous private detective, is approached by a young women, Carla Lemarchant, who asks him to to clear her
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mother's name by going over a murder 16 years previous and proving her mother's innocence. Poirot goes through the tedious process of interviewing all who were involved and reenacting the scene of the crime as well as many other scenes leading up to the death of famous painter Amyas Crale. Carla's mother was charged with the murder after poison was found in the beer she gave to him one warm afternoon. By many accounts she was driven to this point by the arrival of a young women in her twenties named Elsa Greer who swooped in and took Amyas's heart right out of him. She states they plan to marry soon and Amyas will divorce his wife; but Caroline, his present wife is having none of it. Both women fight about this predicament but all the egoistic Crale seems to care about is his painting. However, that is not gopd enough for the women and he ends up dead, poisoned. The case was closed and its horrible memory forcibly forgotten for 16 years, until a determined daughter shows up wanting to know the truth.
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LibraryThing member redfiona
This is not my favourite Christie, it's not even my favourite Poirot, but it's definitely a masterwork. This is where Poirot gets to show he doesn't need the cigarette ash and bits of cloth to solve a mystery as he re-investigates a murder that occured 16 years before. It's also a nice antidote to
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those mysteries where the detective is given more information than the reader. Here we are given exactly the same information as Poirot and allowed to try to figure out whodunit along with him.

It's not perfect, I found the characterisation of Philip Blake a bit flat, but I love all the little character details for Poirot, like when he tells himself off for thinking in nursery rhymes (again) and how he chooses to present himself to the five people present on the day of the murder.

Definitely worth a read.
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LibraryThing member FelicityWindmill
There are five remaining suspects for a murder that happened 16yrs ago. The woman who was convicted at the time died shortly afterwards and her daughter is convinced of her innocence. She asks Poirot to investigate. Each of the five characters writes down how they remember the events of the days
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leading up to the murder and the murder itself as well as their opinions on the victim and the woman found guilty of his murder. Poirot analyses each perspective and reveals the truth at the end in typical style. A classic Poirot story, but the way the story is told makes it a bit repetative and the ending came as no surprise to me, although perhaps I have read too many Agatha Christie novels.
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LibraryThing member riverwillow
This is my perfect Poirot. Sixteen years ago Amyas Crane was poisoned by his wife - but in her last letter to her daughter Caroline Crane protested her innocence and her daughter wants to find out what really happened. The five little pigs of the title are the five main witnesses to the crime, any
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of whom could have really killed Amyas.
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LibraryThing member jnicholson
The daughter of Amyas Crale wishes Poirot to prove that her mother was not guilty of his murder, for which she was convicted 16 years ago.
We ae given an account of the facts from the point of view of each of the other suspects, and Poirot knits the incosistencies together to form a comprehensive
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whole.
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LibraryThing member Figgles
Another nice enjoyable murder with a lovely between the wars artists flavour
LibraryThing member smik
Many of the crime fiction novels we read these days deal with cold cases, but in the 1940s this type of scenario would have been unusual. Not only is the murder victim long dead, but the convicted murderer is dead too. However Poirot has no doubt that he can use his little grey cells to get to the
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truth.

Hercule Poirot always has a soft spot for a young lady in distress or peril. In his previous appearance in EVIL UNDER THE SUN he had great admiration for the female murderer. In FIVE LITTLE PIGS he has great sympathy with Carla Crale's belief in her mother's innocence.

It is Poirot himself who names this case:

A jingle ran through Poirot’s head. He repressed it. He must not always be thinking of nursery rhymes. It seemed an obsession with him lately. And yet the jingle persisted. ‘This little pig went to market, this little pig stayed at home…’

The structure of FIVE LITTLE PIGS is deceptively simple. In Book I there are ten chapters. In the first five Poirot interviews the officials involved in the court cases to see what they remember and what their impression was of Caroline Crale's guilt. In the next five chapters he interviews the five people who were present when the murder happened.

In Book II each of the latter five gives Poirot a written narrative of events and their own opinion of whether Caroline Crale was guilty of murder.

Book III also has five chapters. Poirot brings the five people together with Carla Crale and her fiance. He asks a question each of those who gave him a narrative and then reconstructs what happened as he sees it, pointing out that one of those present has lied, and some of the others are mistaken in their interpretation of what they saw and heard at the time.

For readers it is a most satisfying book because you have the same opportunities as Hercule Poirot to reinterpret the evidence and to look for the flaws in the narratives. I must admit to at first following the red herring that Christie so temptingly laid across my path. I always had an alternative reconstruction lurking in the back of my mind though, and that proved to be the correct one.

This was the last novel of an especially prolific phase of Christie's work on Poirot. She published thirteen Poirot novels between 1935 and 1942 out of a total of eighteen novels in that period. By contrast, she published only two Poirot novels in the next eight years, indicating the possibility that she was experiencing some frustration with her most popular character. (see more at Wikipedia about the novel)
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LibraryThing member katekf
This is a solid Agatha Christie which uses an interesting device of looking back at a crime that seems already solved. Poirot is approached by the daughter of a man who was murdered and who's wife was convicted for the crime, which she has only recently learned about. She asks Poirot to find out
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the truth. The way he does this is by interviewing the five suspects and asking them to write about their memories of the day of the murder and around it. This adds a nice change of voice in the book as their remembrances are presented, which gives the reader another sense of the characters. The story itself is one of the simpler ones of Christie's but this is a good book for showing her skill in the study of place and character.
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LibraryThing member librisissimo
Substance: Poirot is asked to solve an old case, and prove that the woman convicted of murder was innocent. Interviews and written accounts create a "Rashomen" style view of the crime, but are boring in repetition. However, the clues are fairly laid.
Style: The change in title totally obscures a
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carefully constructed use of the "Five Little Pigs" nursery rhyme in the text. Otherwise, it is a standard Christie, with perhaps a little more liveliness in characterization.
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LibraryThing member hazysaffron
I tried to like this book. Just like I've tried to like other Agatha Christie books but I never can seem to get into them. I get lost in the sheer number of characters and the mind-numbingly boring dialogue. This is one very rare case were the TV adaptations are better written than the original
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books.
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LibraryThing member Daniel.Estes
This one is fun, but I found it rather average by Hercule Poirot standards considering how often it shows up on "best of" Agatha Christie lists.

The framing device she uses here, solving a murder 16 years after the fact, is intriguing because so much of the trail has gone cold for Poirot. He must
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rely almost entirely on the memories of those who were involved, and that doesn't include the most significant of all witnesses, the accused, because she's been dead for nearly as long.
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LibraryThing member john257hopper
This is only the second Christie novel I have read, and it doesn't have the immediate impact of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but it is a pretty good example of the clear, simple prose and laying of clues for which she is famous and is a great page turner. The resemblance of the five suspects in the
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murder of Amyas Crale to the five little pigs of the nursery rhyme is fairly tenuous.
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LibraryThing member cbl_tn
Hercule Poirot faces perhaps his biggest challenge yet – a 16-year-old cold case. Caroline Crale was convicted of murdering her artist husband, Amyas Crale, over his affair with a much younger woman. Caroline Crale died a year later, leaving a letter to be given to their young daughter when she
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came of age. The daughter, Carla, has just received the letter in which her mother assures her of her innocence. Carla believes her mother's statement, but she thinks her fiance has doubts. Hercule Poirot may be the only person who could get to the truth of what happened all those years ago. There are five other suspects, and all are still living: brothers Phillip and Meredith Blake, the Crale's nearest neighbors; Elsa Greer, Amyas Crale's model and the “other woman”; Angela Warren, Caroline Crale's younger half sister; and Cecilia Williams, Angela's governess. Poirot asks each of the five for their account of the events leading to Amyas Crale's death and he reaches a surprising conclusion.

In many ways this is a typical country house mystery. There is no doubt that Amyas Crale was poisoned. Other than Amyas and Caroline Crale, only the five living witnesses had access to the poison. If Caroline Crale didn't murder her husband, one of them must have done it. I thought I had the murder all figured out, only to discover that I had fallen for one of the red herrings that Christie so skillfully creates. Christie worked in a pharmacy during World War I, and she is at her best when she writes about poisons. Although this isn't as well known as several of Poirot's other cases, it's still a solid mystery and is characteristic of Christie's work.
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LibraryThing member pussreboots
I like the ending but the second third of the story is a waste of time. The crime took place sixteen years before the time of the story and Poirot spends his time interviewing the little pigs to get their version of what had happened. The book could then easily go right to the reconstruction (third
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part of the book) chapters but instead it choses to languish for another hundred pages on written accounts of the interviews we've just read! ARGH!!!! Do yourself a favor and skip the second act for the third.
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LibraryThing member AmphipodGirl
The puzzle and solution are clever, but I didn't warm to any of the characters, and the story is told in a way that makes the process of detection pretty opaque. I prefer ones where you get to hear the detective's hypotheses and plans as you go.
LibraryThing member katzenfrau
WARNING! Spoiler ahead.

I caught on to it that Caroline thought Angela had poisoned the beer, and was protecting her. I got that pretty much from the beginning, and as I read the narratives, it was confirmed. What I reconstructed was that on the morning of the murder Angela climbed into Meredith's
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laboratory, tearing her skirt (as she did), and took the coniine. She put it in the beer, which she then gave to Caroline, who gave it to Amyas. My theory was that being beaned with a paperweight had done something to Angela's mind, and she had spells in which she sort of... lost judgment. This was supported her own narrative, in which she claims that she simply can't remember anything about the day of the murder. Bull honky. She is intelligent and has a very well organized mind. Poirot hears her give an excellent, very well organized lecture. Miss Williams testifies that she always was gifted. And she can't remember? Whatever.

When Caroline realized that Angela had poisoned Amyas' beer, *I* thought that she had taken the beer bottle and somehow disposed of it, then opened a fresh bottle, emptied it, and put it in place. This fits in with traces of poison being found in the glass but not the beer bottle. Caroline would have done this, because she knows that Miss Williams saw Angela tampering with the beer.

And of course, Angela would have done it--perhaps in an altered state of consciousness--because she was being sent off to school and severed from her sister, by Amyas.

The only loose end in my theory was the issue of Elsa's pullover, which I think Agatha Christie had not thought through clearly. Elsa is not wearing the pullover in the painting, and we know from Amyas' "flight of parrots" comment that Elsa's blue and yellow outfit was important for the painting--no red pullover. Some people think Elsa went to get the pullover before she started to sit for Amyas, some that she went and got it afterward. Only Philip's narrative reports that she went up to the house to get a pullover twice, which of course doesn't make sense. I thought that this may have been an error on Philip's part, or he may have also been in on "covering up" for Angela--his love/hate relationship with Caroline led him to also feel protective of Angela as Caroline did, and so, all these years later, he purposely described Elsa going to the house twice, once--Poirot is supposed to suppose--to retrieve the bottle of poison and once to put it back. I assumed, as a person paying attention would, that Elsa could only have gotten away with going to the house for a pullover once.

It did occur to me that Amyas never intended to leave Caroline. That was a classic AC setup--Elsa could have created the situation out of thin air.

And then, of course, there is the way AC wanted things to be.
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LibraryThing member RubyScarlett
Oooo very good though I didn't appreciate Christie's strange stance on feminism being the same as misandry. Quite a different novel from her previous seeing as here Poirot investigates a murder in a purely psychological way seeing as it happened 16 years earlier and obviously no clues are left and
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all there is to due is to interrogate people. The end is very interesting and gives a lot to think about regarding the privileges of the peerage. Caroline and Angela are both very interesting female characters.
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LibraryThing member jess_reads_books
Sixteen years ago everyone believed it was an open and shut case. The evidence irrefutably pointed at Caroline Crale poisoning her husband, Amayas. Caroline simply had enough of her husband’s cheating ways, which everyone kept trying to justify as the painter’s “artistic personality”. Every
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clue traced back to Caroline: the staged fingerprints, the stolen poison, the motive. Now that her daughter, Carla, has become of age and is preparing to marry, she receives a posthumous letter in the mail from her mother stating that she was innocent. Carla petitions the famous Hercule Poirot to find out the truth.

In an age without DNA databases, fingerprint scanners, and high-tech equipment, reopening a long closed case would be a daunting task for any detective. Hercule Poirot doesn’t see the Crale case that way. He sees this case as a challenge in to the psychology of murder and quickly begins to track down those involved. There are five very clear key players who were present at the time of the murder. Poirot enlists each of them to provide their side of the story through both interview and written narrative. What he finds are conflicting memories and motives associated with each person. Did Caroline Crale actually murder her husband or was it one of the five other people closest to him?

Chrsitie strikes again! I was so confident I knew the truth about the case this time. The style of writing in FIVE LITTLE PIGS was a mixture between Poirot interviewing the five eyewitnesses and them also each writing their own narrative about the events. This unique mixture let the reader see multiple points of view and spot differences between the retellings in an easy-to-read format. As usual, my favorite part of the story was when Poirot gathers everyone in the same room and reveals the truth behind the case and calls each character out on the lies they have been telling. I highly recommend this tale to anyone looking for an introduction to Agatha Christie and her famous detective, Hercule Poirot!
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LibraryThing member jbennett
I enjoyed this as a light read
LibraryThing member ritaer
Poirot asked to solve murder committed 16 years earlier. Succeeds in spotting that least likely suspect was the killer.
LibraryThing member devendradave
During half of the read I came to know the ending. But still its a good read.
LibraryThing member Auntie-Nanuuq
Well known & egotistical artist is in the midst of painting a most fantastic portrait of an equally (if not more so) egotistical young woman..... Hence a triangle of love? Which of course leads to his murder..... Very cold blooded....

However there are men who love the artist's wife w/ devotion &
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hate....... two more triangles. The wife, is heard to say: "You & your women.....One day I'll kill you." Evidence enough to convict her of murder?

The wife does nothing, says nothing to defend herself..... a price/debt to pay? Her daughter, receiving a letter from her mother stating her innocence, hires M. Poirot to clear her mother's name......

Is it possible? Who really "done it"? I figured it out...... But it was a dull story told in first person narration verbally then in letters by the witnesses...... People who were basically detestable....
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Language

Original publication date

1942-05

Physical description

192 p.; 6.8 inches

ISBN

0440160308 / 9780440160304

Barcode

1601733
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