Five Little Pigs

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Mystery / Classic / Christie, Agatha	4-week checkout	Due 05-19-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Mystery / Classic / Christie, Agatha	4-week checkout	Due 05-08-2024

Originally published as : Murder in retrospect.
"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...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..."--P. [4] of cover.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Poirot Tackles a Cold Case submitted by Meginator on June 17, 2023, 11:42pm This is at once an unusual and quintessential Poirot mystery: unusual in that it follows a cold case rather than a current crime and typical insofar as it focuses on Poirot focusing on the characters’ psychology (as he puts it) and using his little gray cells rather than relying on typical forensic evidence. Despite the book consisting primarily of different accounts about the original events, which necessarily involves quite a bit of repetition, it has the feeling of a puzzle about it and doesn’t become uninteresting; Christie does an excellent job of ensuring that each interview and each written account adds a different (and valuable) perspective. The mystery itself is fully satisfying and well-clued, and the cast of characters has just enough depth to make them all plausible suspects, along with the deceased woman who was convicted of the crime so many years ago. Additional details continuously add depth to the story, and the dual timelines offer a rare opportunity for Christie to imagine how the types of crimes she portrays in her stories might affect real human beings. This is a slow-moving and cerebral case, even for the likes of Poirot, but it is nonetheless still a gripping story that unfolds itself gradually, under the author’s complete control.

Perspectives submitted by kathscot on August 10, 2023, 8:54am A stockbroker, a home-loving squire, a rich woman, a poor governess and (at the time of the murder) an emotional teenager: their relationships of love and hate amongst each other and with the murdered artist and his convicted wife are the focus of the mystery. A fascinating puzzle and a chilling conclusion.