Five Little Pigs
Dust-jacket illustration of the US (true first) edition with alternative title. See Publication history (below) for UK first edition jacket image with original title.
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| Author | Agatha Christie |
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| Cover artist | Not known |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Dodd, Mead and Company |
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Publication date
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May 1942 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 234 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | The Body in the Library |
| Followed by | The Moving Finger |
Five Little Pigs is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in May 1942 under the title of Murder in Retrospect and in UK by the Collins Crime Club in January 1943 although some sources state that publication occurred in November 1942. The UK first edition carries a copyright date of 1942 and retailed at eight shillings while the US edition was priced at $2.00.
The book features Hercule Poirot. The novel is notable as a rigorous attempt to demonstrate Poirot's repeatedly stated contention that it is possible to solve a mystery purely by reflecting upon the testimony of the participants, and without access to the scene of the crime. 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. Five Little Pigs is unusual in the way that the same events are retold from several standpoints.
Sixteen years after Caroline Crale has been convicted of the murder of her husband, Amyas Crale, her daughter, Carla Lemarchant, approaches Poirot to investigate the case. Poirot embarks optimistically upon an unprecedented challenge, but soon fears that the case may be just as cut and dried as it had originally appeared.
Carla is engaged to be married but she is afraid that the fact that her mother killed her father will poison her husband's love for her, as he may fear that she has inherited a murderous tendency. Carla also remembers her mother would never lie to her to hide an unpleasant truth and her mother had told her she was innocent through a letter. That is enough for Carla but she wants Poirot to convince her fiance.
Carla's father, painter Amyas Crale, was poisoned with coniine, which had been extracted from poison hemlock by their friend and neighbor Meredith Blake, an amateur chemist, but subsequently apparently stolen from him by Carla's mother, Caroline Crale. Caroline confessed to stealing the poison, claiming she had intended to use it to commit suicide. The poison ended up, however, in a glass from which Amyas had drunk cold beer, complaining that 'everything tastes foul today.' Both the glass and the bottle of cold beer had been brought to him by Caroline. Her motive was clear: Amyas's young model and latest mistress, Elsa Greer, claimed he was planning to divorce Caroline and marry her instead. This was a new development; though Amyas had frequently had mistresses and affairs, he had never before shown any sign of wanting to leave Caroline.
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Wikipedia