Five Little Pigs - Agatha Christie

Hi Guys,

Wishing the readers of my blog and all book lovers a Happy World Books Day.

A few days back, I read the book ‘Five Little Pigs’ written by Agatha Christie in 1943. This is the fourth book of Agatha Christie I’m reading and it is the second time I’m reading a book with Hercule M. Poirot as the protagonist. The other one was ‘Elephants can Remember’ and I am of the opinion that both these stories have some common strings.

A young beautiful girl named Carla Lemarchant meets M. Poirot. She says that her real name is Caroline Crale, the same as that of her mother’s and she wants to unravel a mystery. Her mother was framed for poisoning her husband Amyas Crale, who was a painter and before dying Caroline had written a letter stating that she was innocent. This happened 16 years back when the little girl was 5.

Knowing her mother, Carla says that her mother must be innocent and someone else must have done the murder. There are 5 people who were closely associated with Amyas and suddenly Poirot remembers the rhyme ‘Five Little Pigs’. There are Philip Blake, Amyas’ close friend and his brother Meredith Blake, whose hobby is researching on chemicals and incidentally the poison was stolen from his lab.

Then, there is Elsa Greer, a young girl who had seduced Amyas when he was painting her. Generally it was believed that Amyas was going to marry Elsa and this led to heated arguments between the couple and Caroline lost her temper. Then there is little Angela Warren, who was Caroline’s half sister and Caroline had thrown a paperweight on her when she was a baby permanently damaging her face and this also stood testimony that Caroline could lose temper. Then there is the old Cecilla Williams, who was Angela’s governess.

Poirot first visits the judges, the advocates and the police superintend and hear their opinions. Everyone believes that Caroline was the murderess. Then he visits the five little pigs one by one. They also strongly believe that Caroline was the murderess despite some having good opinions on her. Then he asks for their written accounts.

In the second book (part), we are treated with the written records of the five persons one by one. Thinking about, it is amazing how Agatha Christie has written them. A same incident interpreted in five different ways by different persons.

Then Poirot interprets the five accounts and reasons out the contradictions by asking one question to the five persons. Then finally he uncovers the murderer.

It is hard to predict the antagonist in a detective story and I try to find it out each time and fail. This time also I did the same. For a while I thought that I had found out the actual murderer. But then it was again a trap laid by Agatha Christie to fool the readers. The story ended in a completely unpredictable fashion.

A great book to read if you like detective stories. I finished the book in a single – started in the morning and ended it by night.

If you are interested to buy this book, you can use the link below to get it from Flipkart.

Happy Reading!!!