The Big Four By Agatha Christie
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 5:52PM 
ISBN: 0007234511
This Edition published 2006
Poirot is back, and this time he has Captain Hastings alongside him. In this novel, Christie plunges her heroes into the world of organized crime. Sadly, not very successfully.
Poirot and Hastings find themselves hunted by "The Big Four". The Big Four are four powerful individuals from around the globe who have plans for world domination. Their trail of murder awakens Poirot's interest and he and Hastings set about trying to uncover their identities and stop their dastardly plan.
The villains in this book feel as though they have fallen out of a very bad 1970s spy story, and I kept expecting them to shout "Bwah ha ha!" every couple of pages. Poirot and Hastings are captured more than once and are in mortal peril, only to escape in the most ludicrous ways.
The whole thing felt very far away from the Christie I know and love, and it is fortuitous that this was not the first book of hers that I read, I may never have carried on! Give this one a miss.
Reader Comments (1)
I also dislike this book. I've read in several places that Christie was pushed to write the book in the face of rising so called 'yellow peril' literature at the time (), such as that from the pen of Sax Rohmer, but I don't know how much truth is in that. I think it shows that she wasn't really that interested in the book so much, given the flippancy with which she treats some of the plot devices. Definitely the weakest of her books that I've read to date, and I am something of a fan!