Mark Aldridge - Agatha Christies Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World

THE GREATEST DETECTIVE IN THE WORLD

HarperCollinsPublishers

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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright Mark Aldridge 2020

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, DEATH ON THE NILE, AGATHA CHRISTIE, POIROT, the AC Monogram Logo, the Poirot Icon and the Agatha Christie Signature are registered trademarks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and elsewhere. All rights reserved.

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Cover design by Holly Macdonald HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2022

Cover illustration Bill Bragg

Mark Aldridge asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780008296643

Ebook Edition November 2020 ISBN: 9780008296629

Version: 2022-01-24

Although arranged chronologically, this book is designed so that you may read it however you choose whether from cover to cover, or by dipping into sections that you particularly want to find out more about (or, indeed, skip sections that you are less interested in). There are no major spoilers in the main text, although a handful are in the endnotes (and clearly signposted as such).

What is required, of course, is order.

Order is paramount. Order is a good and beautiful thing. Order is what the little Belgian prizes above all things. But order is a hard thing to come by when assembling memories. What, you may ask yourself (standing in the metaphorical witness box of one of those tiresome trials which he himself never seemed to attend), was your first encounter with M. Hercule Poirot? A thrilling childhood viewing of And Then There Were None and the Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple films had taught me that Christie was very much up my street, but it was on foreign holidays (where Christie still seems to belong) that I first properly engaged with the little man with the egg-shaped head. The Mallorcan apartment wed rented, you see, had the lot a whole shelf of Christies with those incredibly scary Tom Adams covers and the strange, mustardy coloured pages of the foreign edition. The ABC Murders. Death on the Nile. Five Little Pigs. Halloween Party. I can still remember one sultry Spanish evening, breathlessly explaining the plot of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd to my slightly bemused parents as we trudged home from the local tapas bar. Indiscriminately, I devoured them (the books, not my parents). There was no order, you see! No way of appreciating the incredible run of copper-bottomed classics that Christie produced in what was a genuine golden age of crime writing. Which is why its so pleasing to see each novel given a (spoiler-free) synopsis in Mark Aldridges delightful, detailed and compulsively readable history of the great detective. And also to see the pleasingly gushing reviews from the papers of the time (The Observers crossword-compiler Torquemada is a particular delight). Its thus possible to see Agatha Christie grow from a popular but easily dismissed sausage-machine into a national treasure.

But just who is Hercule Poirot? Albert Finneys spluttering, sinister pug-in-a-hairnet Poirot? Peter Ustinovs clubbable, delightful, portly Poirot? David Suchets avuncular, twinkling Poirot, his little grey cells owning many a childhood? John Moffatt on the radio? Austin Trevor? Charles Laughton? Kenneth Branagh? There have, you see, been an awful lot of Poirots, although, as Mark Aldridge demonstrates, few actually met with Dame Agathas approval. Leading us by an infectiously learned hand, Mark travels all the way from Styles to Styles, from the detectives faltering beginnings right through to his creators demise and beyond. To the rich afterlife which has propelled Poirot into the front rank of fictional detectives and into one of the most beloved characters in popular culture. Marks text is peppered with fascinating fragments from Christies correspondence and that of her family. Her own sometimes crotchety response to publishers, editors and (most entertainingly) fans, as well as unpublished portions of her autobiography. There are wonderful blind alleys and curious near-misses all along the way. Did you know that Orson Welles played Poirot and Dr Sheppard? That there was a 1962 TV pilot in which Martin Gabels Poirot watches TV in the back of his car? That Ronnie Barker played Poirot (straight) at the Oxford Playhouse? Its a feast for both the dyed-in-the-moustaches fan and the newcomer alike, a testament to a still-thriving industry born of sheer talent, hard work and what we would now call brand management. Mark brings order to a sometimes chaotic narrative, along the way nailing the unique, Sunday-night charm of the Suchet series and the reasons why the Ustinov Evil under the Sun is still the best time anyone can have in the cinema.

And though he mysteriously describes Spice World The Movie as a classic comedy caper, he rightly dismisses the version of Appointment with Death which I myself was in. Some crimes even Papa Poirot cannot forgive.

MARK GATISS

London. 2020

Mes amis, we have cause for celebration. The great Hercule Poirot, the incomparable private detective, has now been entertaining us for a full century. Ever since The Mysterious Affair at Styles, written by Agatha Christie during the First World War and first published in 1920, the reading public has keenly followed the Belgian detectives adventures as he investigated mysteries throughout the highs and lows of the following decades. We have seen Poirot solve mysteries on trains, ships, and even a plane, with the results usually delivered to a warm critical and popular reception. He has solved cruel murders, uncovered international conspiracies, and found missing jewels for relieved owners. While doing this, he has sometimes been ably assisted by friends including Captain Hastings, Inspector Japp, his valet George, secretary Miss Lemon, and crime writer Ariadne Oliver but it is always Poirots own little grey cells that are needed to solve the crimes.

Some have tried to tell Poirots life story by weaving together the scraps of information found in dozens of stories written across more than half a century, but any attempt to create a conclusive biography of the detective is a futile task. Many facts are irreconcilable, and there are gaps and contradictions alongside extraordinary anti-ageing abilities. Even Christie often had to double check details of Poirots life with her agent, and so its no surprise that there are inconsistencies. Thankfully, this doesnt matter, because to make Poirot real would be to make him mundane and minimise his brilliance as a creation. This creative force, and the woman behind it, is what this book celebrates and explores.