Five Little Pigs, by Agatha Christie

Warning: I'm about to go on an Agatha Christie binge this month, so beware, you'll probably encounter reviews of many of her books here. Last weekend I read Five Little Pigs, also published as Murder in Retrospect.

Five Little Pigs concerns a murder committed sixteen years earlier. Carla Crale prevails
upon Hercule Poirot to investigate the crime that sent her mother, Caroline, to prison for life (where she died). Caroline had been found guilty of poisoning her husband, Carla's father, Amyas Crale, the famous artist.

Poirot's investigation centers upon five suspects, still living, whom he convinces to speak to him and to record their own memories of the long-ago incident. Brilliantly intersplicing the past and the present, memory and reality, the search for truth and ongoing attempts to thwart it, Five Little Pigs has no antecedent.

This was a very compelling mystery. A B+.

The characterization was wonderful here (it must be noted that this isn't usually considered Christie's strong point), and the mystery was interesting and wonderfully plotted. Additionally, it had the extra interest of examining how the different people described the same events, how they saw and remembered different things, much of it due to their own personalities. However, there was a section where the author "transcribed" their accounts of the days before and after the murder which I felt bogged down the story a bit.

The most fascinating about the characterization I though were the dynamics between the murdered man and his wife, even if a wife staying with a husband who keeps cheating on her and even has the gall to have his latest lover stay at their house is something I'll never understand. It was especially interesting to see the other characters' reactions to it... was she right to stay? Should his selfishness be forgiven because he was such an excellent artist? I liked the exploration of these questions.

As always, the conclusion has Poirot gathering all the possible culprits and recounting what exactly happened. Christie's books have probably been the influence that has made me prefer this kind of ending to the "exciting", held-at-gunpoint type.

I did guess the solution to the mystery, even if I didn't see exactly how that person had done it. I was especially proud of how soon I guessed Caroline's motivations for her behaviour during the trial (in effect refusing to defend herself, and all that).