The Big Four

Agatha Christie

Nov 2022 · Aegitas

About this ebook

A 1927 novel with Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings as protagonists. The book was published shortly after the death of Agatha's mother and her divorce from her first husband. There was no inspiration, so the author reworked the stories previously published only in magazines, combined them with the confrontation of Hercule Poirot and the international criminal organization "Big Four", and we got a novel of the same name. Hercule Poirot so many intricate cases unraveled – why would he not reveal and defuse the world conspiracy? To Hercule Poirot came a strange stranger, said no less strange things and lost consciousness. And soon he was dead. Thus begins the story of the struggle between Poirot and the Big Four – a mysterious organization that has everything – intelligence, money, power and far-reaching plans. This time Poirot (and with him and his faithful friend Hastings) has worthy and powerful opponents, who are not at all simple, and to know their names means nothing, especially since one of them changes faces like gloves. Our dear Lady Agatha decided to scare her character's fans. And Poirot surprises more and more. The finale of the story is what it should be, true, with a pinch of uncertainty, but it gave it spice.

About the author

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story collections, nineteen plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the name Mary Westmacott. She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with her debut novel The Mysterious Af air at Styles. With The Murder in the Vicarage, published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime-fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp. Many of Christie’s novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films, and television series. The Mousetrap, her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Among her best-known film adaptations are Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978), with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot, respectively. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie. Christie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of Britain’s highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. Her one hundred and twentieth anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2010.