Five Little Pigs (Hercule Poirot #24)

Five Little Pigs (Hercule Poirot #24)

3.87 of 5 stars 3.87  ·  rating details  ·  8,682 ratings  ·  342 reviews
Amyas Crale was a famous painter, and lover. His wife Caroline was as jealous as she was devoted, and died in prison a year after convicted of his murder. 16 years later, their daughter asks Poirot for the truth. Find the guilty suspect from Five Little Pigs, also titled Murder in Retrospect.
Paperback, 224 pages
Published December 15th 1985 by Berkley (first published 1941)
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9th out of 68 books — 345 voters
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Anne Toronto1
15 years ago, accused Caroline Crale died in prison one year after being convicted of poisoning her famous artist husband Amyas, a philanderer "egoist" p27 obsessed with his paintings over all else. Learning the truth in Canada at 21, daughter Caroline (Carla or Caro) returns to England, begs Poirot to prove Caroline's note declaring innocence. Crales's cautious friend and neighbor Meredith Blake, herbal concoction hobbyist, missed his hemlock potion, remains found in victim's beer glass, but no...more
Cindy
Feb 12, 2008 Cindy rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: mystery lovers
Shelves: mysteries
In this story, Poirot gets a chance to do something he's never done before - to solve a mystery without a single clue, simply by talking to the people who were involved.

Sixteen years ago, artist Amyas Crale was poisoned. His wife was arrested and convicted of murder. She wrote a letter to her young daughter saying she was innocent. Now the girl is grown and engaged to be married. But first she wants to know what really happened.

Poirot has little work with. He starts by talking to the lawyers on...more
Eric Townsend
Agatha Christie does it again. Every time I read one of her books and think I know “who done it” I’m always wrong, without fail. She throws so many twists and turns along the way, and just when you think that without a doubt it must be person X, she reveals the truth and you look silly. I imagine Christie got a kick out of that.

Murder in Retrospect, like all of Christie’s books, takes me back to a time when things were written so much differently. The dialogue is handled in a way you just don’t...more
Faa
“Innocence can be redefined and called stupidity. Honesty can be called gullibility. Candor becomes lack of common sense. Interest in your work can be called cowardice. Generosity can be called soft-headedness, and observe : the former is disturbing,”
-Abraham Maslow

I often wonder, after I read this book on few things.
First, was Caroline Crale blinded by her loves and devotion that she allowed herself a defeat in the court of law without even an ounce of struggle.
Second, was her love so great and...more
Harshita
Absolutely spiffingly marvelous!

I had started to get restless on my Poirot Marathon. The characters seemed uni-dimensional, plot points were getting repeated and I could almost guess the murderer. I started wondering whether reading all these books in a go was a bad idea after all. Then I started reading this book and realized that Agatha Christie had reached her golden age of mystery writing. Awesome!

So we have a young girl Carla Crale, a young girl engaged to be married soon who hires Hercule...more
Carol
After a few stressful weeks, I needed another light mystery to smoke through! Reading an Agatha Christie is like eating a small butter/pecan tart or small ice-cream cone. You enjoy the rich flavour and you swallow the entire thing quickly in one bite.

In “Five Little Pigs,” Christie does a great job at providing contrasting characters. It’s a retrospective crime mystery ( with 6 year-old clues), and the true identity of the killer can only be discovered through interviews and journals. This prov...more
Robin
3.5 Stars. Not one of my favorite Christie mysteries starring Hercule Poirot, but still really good.

(Note: I gather that some editions were published with the title "Five Little Pigs", but my copy is "Murder in Retrospect", which I think more accurately describes the story.)

Poirot is intrigued to investigate a murder which occurred 16 years previously. Carla Lamarchant knows her mother did not kill her father, though she was tried and convicted of the crime. So who did? Poirot convinces the othe...more
Laurel
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
maricar
A bit sad to read through. It’s as if the luster from Poirot’s ‘glamour’ as a detective has lost its strength.

The premise is a promising one, don’t get me wrong: can one resolve a murder that has been resolutely concluded 16 years ago and, for all intents and purposes, left (almost) everyone with no doubt as to the identity of the killer? Poirot hardly thought twice and set off to show the readers just that.

Murder in retrospect, indeed.

In a way, Christie does prove that all one need is the fun...more
Chris
I hate the Yankees. I think that it is required if you are a true baseball fan and you live in a baseball town outside the State of New York that you hate the Yankees. You don't even have to be living in Boston. It is pretty much universal. There are exceptions made for transplants, relatives of players, casual fans, etc., but basically it holds true.

But I have to admit that I like Mariano Rivera.

You have to like him because he is the best ever at what he does and he doesn't make a big fuss abo...more
Rubal
More like 3.5

I made a status update halfway through the book remarking that I knew who murdered Amyas and how.
I was so confident that I had cracked the “Agatha Christie” modus operandi .I even consciously picked up bits and pieces from the book to support my theory.
But I don’t feel any shame in admitting that the magic of the ‘Queen of crime’ is still successful. I was wide off the mark, exactly where Agatha wanted her readers, right in her trap. For this reason, the book went from 3 to 3.5.

Amya...more
Rick Toews
Not bad. Ending was mildly gratifying. No clever or amusing turns of phrase to tickle the mind; still, because I wanted to get to the end and see how the mystery was resolved, I resented having to put the book down.

The Poirot character is portrayed as taking a psychological approach in his investigations. This appeals to me. I believe that, in general, people behave consistently with their characters and that if a thing is observed to be very much out of character, one is justified in looking fo...more
Debarati
Agatha Christie is, above all, a master decoder of human behaviour. Her books are layered- at the surface, her books are your classic whodunnits. If you look deeper, you will find that these books are a study in human behaviour.

Spoiler alert

Caroline and Amyas Crale are deeply in love and have, what we can label today, an open marriage. It seems their deal was- Amyas can go screw any woman so long as he got a painting done out of it and as long as he came home to Caroline. Into this open arrange...more
Christine
Sixteen years after Caroline Crale was convicted of murdering her husband, her (now adult) daughter employs the services of Hercule Poirot to clear her mother's name. Unfortunately, Caroline died in prison and the case is considered solved, but Poirot is intrigued by the challenge. He seeks out the key players during the case, re-interviews them and then asks them to write their own account of the crime.


What makes this book unique is that this is essentially a cold case and forensics are not wh...more
Shilpa
This was just a light read I tired while away on a trip.
Not as full of suspense or intersting as I supposed it to be, this is a story about a trial that has happened sixteen years ago and is investigated again by Hercules Poirot on a special request from the accused's daughter.
Amyas is famous painter who loves his wife Caroline but this doesn't refrain him from getting into affairs .
Caroline is ok with his innumerable affairs as long as Amyas comes back to her.
But, everything changes when young...more
Philip
I'm reading FIVE LITTLE PIGS in the recently-published edition published by Harper Books in the US. Actually it's a re-read, as I read it in 1975 as MURDER IN RETROSPECT - the new edition reproduces the original British text, dividing the novel into three parts (or "books") with an "Introduction" (another reason to be grateful for these new reprints) - the 1974 Dell paperback makes no such distinctions, evening reformatting chapters - it does make note of the five "narratives" though. Although I...more
Bhavya Mathur
Agatha Christie is so good, she is cruel. I had just read Evil Under the Sun(which I did not like much) and I thought I have read too much of her and can almost figure out the mystery myself. With this book, the author mocked me, laughed at me and showed me just why I love her.
This is an unusual mystery where a murder happened 16 years ago and Poirot is approached because the victim's daughter wants the truth. After reading 80% of the book, I thought I know who dunnit. Agatha Christie made me b...more
Mónica Silva
Opinião no blog http://howtoliveathousandlives.blogsp...

Mais um livro fabuloso de Agatha Christie, tendo como personagem principal o adorado detetive belga, Hercule Poirot. No entanto, desta vez Poirot está encarregue de desvendar um crime perpetrado há dezasseis anos e que, como se isto não fosse suficiente, já se encontra encerrado e o criminoso devidamente acusado! Mas será que a justiça foi verdadeiramente cumprida neste caso?

Assim, temos aqui uma perspetiva bastante diferente do típico mis...more
Wolf
This is one of Agatha Christie's best. It is her first attempt at dealing with solving crimes in the past - a theme she'd return to in Sleeping Murder and Elephants Can Remember. It is beautifully and elegantly dealt with here.

The structure of the book revolves around the recollection of those who were involved in a killing some sixteen years beforehand. Most of the book is devoted to the written accounts of five witnesses. All the clues are fairly presented, all Poirot's deductions pleasing, fi...more
Courtney
Another Agatha Christie/Hercule Poirot classic, this particular story covers the psychological detective work of a man investigating a decades old murder mystery. The details of the crime unfold through an interesting slant: the author uses multiple characters' perspectives in a manner reminiscent of the 2008 film Vantage Point.

Overall, this story was a mildly engaging read, but nothing spectacular, as I found myself wholly able to put the book down several times at what should have been cliffh...more
Bookworm007
First off, if you, goodreader, decided to read this book, then you absolutely MUST watch the film adaption. It's incredible!

Now for my review...


oh my god BEST mystery novel I have read by Agatha Christie!!!!!

It's my absolute favourite type of mystery because each suspect tells his/her perspective of the murder and clues are subtly hidden in their respective stories.

Aaahhh! I'm still overwhelmed by the intestity of this book!

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A wonderfuly woven read, if...more
Bigyellowtaxi1
I never seem to enjoy the nursery rhyme inspired Christies. In this case it was more than a dislike of the contrived feeling that comes from the five little pigs motif. Because Poirot is investigating a (very) cold case this lacks the immediacy that makes the mystery genre so exciting. Instead the reader is subjected to a series of interviews, a series of written accounts and only at the end are all are the suspects together. Of course, I'm as much a fan of the big reveal in the drawing room as...more
Maggie
Cada vez que leo a Agatha Christie recuerdo por qué me gusta tanto.
Este libro es otro caso del buen detective Monsieur Poirot, pero esta vez un poco distinto. Durante esta historia, se analiza un "cold case" es decir un crimen que se cometió hace mucho y del que incluso ya se había tomado un veredicto. Hace dieciséis años asesinaron al pintor Amyas Crale. Y todo apunta a que fue su esposa Carolina Crale la culpable de envenenarlo, porque Amyas pensaba dejarla por su joven amante Elsa Greer. Per...more
Dhuaine
I have a hard time accepting books where characters remember things from several years past. In this case, it's 16 years - a lot. I don't think I remember that much about things that happened 5 years ago. And yet, Hercule Poirot is able to piece the entire setting together based on these chunks of info and find the real murderer.

Well, apart from this, the book is very good and rather plausible. I personally found the analysis of different versions of the story - told by 5 different people - ver...more
Martha Rosenthal
This is classic Agatha Christie. I loved it. Her sleuth here is the priggish, but genius, Hercule Poirot. Years ago a temperamental, womanizing artist was murdered and his wife convicted of the crime. She dies in prison, but leaves a note to her daughter asserting her innocence. Her daughter having reached the age of 21 reads the note and hires Poirot to find out the truth, which of course, he does. There are lots of distinctive characters. I actually took notes and tried to unearth the real vil...more
Heather
Look, I don't normally read mysteries. It's just not my thing. This particular mystery seemed perfectly fine, as far as mysteries go, but I still didn't particularly enjoy it. In this case (and in most mystery books), the author buries one tiny, tiny hint in a mountain of non-relevant dialogue and at the end, you're expected to have remembered that only Ginny Blackstone rolls her R's in that particular manner so she must have been the killer, or whatever, and you're left wondering, "Wait, what?"...more
Kirsty Darbyshire
in one of those curious pieces of transatlantic title changing the copy of this i read had the consideraby less interesting title of murder in retrospect. does the rhyme this little piggy went to market... not exist on the left hand side of the atlantic? the current printing in the us has the original title though.

i read this in the course of a sunday evening, the fastest book i've read in quite some time. the murder had happened years before and hercule poirot goes round to see all the various...more
Lisa Rathbun
Can Poirot solve a murder that happened 16 years ago, one that a woman was already tried and convicted for? As I read this story, I thought it was going in one way, but once again Agatha Christie surprised me. She does it convincingly too, and the fun thing for me was that the statements that clued Hercule Poirot in to the real murderer were statements that rang wrong to me at the time but I didn't know how to put two and two together. When I realized it at the end, I thought, "I DID think that...more
Nicole
I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was a very good mystery. However, I think the whole incorporating the "Five Little Pigs" nursery rhyme didn't fit. Unlike the rhyme in "And Then There Were None", it was not relevant to the story. However, I liked the fact that Hercule Poirot had to solve this mystery based purely on psychology and the accounts of the people who, of course, are all suspects. I thought everything made sense at the end, which was nice. There wasn't exactly a huge climax, bu...more
Mintwitch
FIVE LITTLE PIGS is one of Christie's later novels, featuring a Hercule Poirot without his faithful sidekick, but with quite a few more wrinkles and gray hairs, though Christie is never so crass as to say so right out. It's also one of her most cerebral novels. The mystery to be solved is 16 years in the past, and Poirot must ferret out the truth solely from the dim recollections of the surviving witnesses.

The result is a surprisingly tense and enjoyable Who Dunnit. The reader has access to all...more
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Five Little Pigs (Hercule Poirot #24)
Five Little Pigs: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Paperback)
Five Little Pigs (Paperback)
Murder in Retrospect (Paperback)
Five Little Pigs (Paperback)

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Agatha Christie also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, and was occasionally published under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan.

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devon, England, U.K., as the youngest of three. The Millers had two other children: Margaret Frary Miller (1879–1950), called Madge, who was eleven years Agatha's senior, and Louis Montant Miller (1880...more
More about Agatha Christie...
And Then There Were None Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10) The Mysterious Affair At Styles (Hercule Poirot #1) Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple, #1) Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot #17)

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“Poirot said placidly, “One does not, you know, employ merely the muscles. I do not need to bend and measure the footprints and pick up the cigarette ends and examine the bent blades of grass. It is enough for me to sit back in my chair and think. It is this – ” he tapped his egg-shaped head – “this, that functions!” 9 people liked it
“Men—’ said Miss Williams, and stopped.
As a rich property owner says ‘Bolsheviks’—as an earnest Communist says ‘Capitalists!’—as a good housewife says ‘Blackbeetles’—so did Miss Williams say ‘Men!”
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