The Big Four by Agatha Christie

JetBlackDragonfly

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This Hercule Poirot thriller is considered by Christie herself, critics, and readers as one of her worst. While she grieved her mother's death and the breakup of her marriage, it was suggested she tie several Poirot stories together into a book, which she did with little interest. Her publisher refused it until Christie mysteriously disappeared for eleven days. The resulting public interest buoyed the sales, selling even more copies than her next mystery, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. There is no manor house or body in the library; rather, a string of episodes where Poirot is styled as an action spy (climbing out of windows and foiling ambushes) against the greatest masterminds out to control the world.

Hastings discovers Poirot has taken a job in Rio from Abe Ryland, the richest man in the world. When a dying man arrives at Poirot's door with the name of Chinese mastermind Li Chang Yen in his last breath, they know Rio was a ruse to get Poirot out of London. An evil gang of international criminals known as The Big Four is out to disintegrate civilization using forces more powerful than the world has dreamed of. It gives little away to say they are Li Chang Yen, American millionaire Ryland, Madame Olivier (the celebrated French scientist whose face is disfigured by a nasty scar) working on a gamma ray weapon which focuses a Radium beam of great intensity, whose secretary is a famous Russian jewel thief. After each escapade, the clue of a number 4 is found. The foremost authority on the Chinese disappears; scientists are kidnapped; torpedo boats are sunk; and in what is called the Yellow Jasmine Mystery, a wealthy man is both poisoned and burned in a fire. Hastings himself is kidnapped into the heart of the Chinatown underground to face certain death.

"Mon ami, where there is The Big Four, there is always danger."

Hercule Poirot can decode cryptic messages and discover stolen radium, but throwing bombs, jumping off trains, and breaking into a secret mountain lair in the heart of the Dolomites is a little closer to Bulldog Drummond. The mysterious fourth member of the gang weaves in and out of each escapade in a myriad of disguises—explained by Poirot afterwards with no clue to the reader. If all this were not enough, Christie even brings in Poirot's twin brother Achille Poirot to help solve the case!

As in Yellow Peril thrillers of the time, there are derogatory terms used for the Chinese.

David Suchet starred in the TV series episode of The Big Four, for which they created a new story, as this novel was deemed unfilmable. Entertaining if you do not expect much, but in no league with any of Christie's other works, and best forgotten from the Poirot canon.

1927 / Hardcover / 212 pages