The definitive companion to the POIROT novels, films and TV appearances.‘My name is Hercule Poirot and I am probably the greatest detective in the world.'The dapper, moustache-twirling little Belgian with the egg-shaped head, curious mannerisms and inordinate respect for his own 'little grey cells' has solved some of the most puzzling crimes of the century. Yet despite being familiar to millions, Poirot himself has remained an enigma – until now.From his first appearance in 1920 to his last in 1975, from country-house drawing-rooms to opium dens in Limehouse, from Mayfair to the Mediterranean, Anne Hart stalks the legendary sleuth, unveiling the mysteries that surround him. Sifting through 33 novels and 56 short stories, she examines his origins, tastes, relationships and peculiarities, revealing a character as fascinating as the books themselves.
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Anne Hart. Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Life and Times of Hercule Poirot
AGATHA CHRISTIE’S POIROT. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HERCULE POIROT. Anne Hart
Contents
PREFACE
1 THE CURTAIN RISES
NOTES
2 THE ENGLISH DEBUT
NOTES
3 THE 1920S
NOTES
4 THE 1930S
NOTES
5 THE 1940S
NOTES
6 THE LAST THREE DECADES
NOTES
7 THE COMPLETE POIROT
NOTES
8 THE ENGLISH WORLD OF HERCULE POIROT
NOTE
9 CAPTAIN ARTHUR HASTINGS, OBE
NOTES
10 THE DOMESTIC POIROT
NOTE
11 THE EXPEDITIONARY POIROT
NOTES
12 ‘MY FRIEND POIROT’
NOTES
13 COUNTESS ROSSAKOFF AND MRS OLIVER
NOTES
14 THE AVAILABLE POIROT
NOTES
15 THE DETECTIVE POIROT
NOTES
16 THE CURTAIN FALLS
A POIROT BIBLIOGRAPHY. BOOKS
SHORT STORIES
POIROT FILMS AND TELEVISION
REFERENCES
If you enjoyed Agatha Christie’s Poirot, check out these other great Anne Hart titles
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER WORKS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Отрывок из книги
For Susan, Peter and Stephen
Title Page
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7 Also published under the titles ‘The Clue of the Chocolate Box’ and ‘The Time Hercule Poirot Failed’. There is some confusion as to when this case actually occurred. In Cards on the Table, set in 1937, Poirot spoke of it as having happened ‘twenty-eight years ago’, which places it in 1909, but in Peril at End House he referred to it as ‘a bad failure in Belgium in 1893’.
Vegetable marrows? Poirot? Had he gone quite mad? Was he pining for Hastings? Or the audacious Countess Rossakoff? Or both? Was a year spent virtually alone in a neat walled garden and an overheated sitting-room in King’s Abbot Poirot’s tidy version of a nervous breakdown? It is true that he was now comfortably off, his reputation assured by the recent publication of Hastings’s memoirs, but this period of self-imposed exile, with only the marrows and an ancient Breton housekeeper for company, was a curious episode indeed. Fortunately, one afternoon something snapped. In anger he threw his most impressive vegetable marrow over the garden wall (it landed with ‘a repellent squelch’) and re-entered the world. King’s Abbot, on the very day that Roger Ackroyd was murdered, was at last permitted to know that in its midst dwelt the most eminent detective in Europe.
