This is the first Agatha Christie I've read from the 1950s, and her transformation is fascinating.
And after one of his awe-inspiring deductions a lawyer remarks, "In the Middle Ages you would certainly have been burnt at the stake." What develops is a fascinating mystery, and Poirot himself is on fine form, "deliberately playing the mountebank"and revealing unsurprisingly that the "sound of his own voice was always pleasant to him."Īt the same time his sharp and enquiring mind is very much in evidence. It is refreshingly different to have a Poirot story being set in motion by a crime other than murder - though there will be plenty of murder, too, of course. It's a student hostel and it is being plagued with a bizarre series of thefts. The sister is called Mrs Hubbard (possibly another nursery rhyme reference) and she runs that boarding house I mentioned. It begins with Poirot's faithful, infallible automaton of a secretary Miss Lemon revealing that she has a sister. This is the 32nd Hercule Poirot novel, published in 1955. Still, the title provided the justification for that Tom Adams cover painting with the cute little mouse on it. Hickory Dickory Dock isn't in that league, but it's good enough to deserve a better name. Possibly the worst example is Five Little Pigs, where she imposed an utterly irrelevant moniker on a masterpiece of a novel.
The connection is utterly tenuous, though - most of the action takes place at a boarding house in Hickory Road, an imaginary location in London.Īgatha Christie was weirdly fond of nursery rhyme titles and had a tendency to crowbar them in where they didn't belong. You can practically see the little gray cells at work.The title of Hickory Dickory Dock will probably baffle non-English readers, and quite a few English ones. He captures the little Belgian’s character so completely, from his fussy fastidiousness and sharp, dry humor to his persistent genius.
His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side.” Add his signature mustache, a Belgian accent which to his fury is often mistaken for French, and exquisitely tailored suits, and Suchet becomes Poirot so entirely that it’s a little difficult to see him in any other role. In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot is described thus: “He was hardly more than five feet four inches, but carried himself with great dignity. He ended up carrying around a detailed list of Poirot’s foibles, likes and dislikes, as a constant reminder. Christie’s family had actually seen him perform before and suggested that he might be right for the role, and Suchet threw himself into preparations in much the same way Hercule himself would have: he read nearly every text in which the detective appeared, ending up with pages upon pages of notes. David Suchet is a method actor, and he was able to inhabit the role of Poirot perfectly.
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