The A.B.C. Murders

The A.B.C. Murders  

Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition
Author(s) Agatha Christie
Translator Greg Messer
Cover artist Not known
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Crime novel
Publisher Collins Crime Club
Publication date January 6, 1936
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 256 pp (first edition, hardcover)
ISBN NA
Preceded by Death in the Clouds
Followed by Murder in Mesopotamia

The A.B.C. Murders is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on January 6, 1936[1] and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company on February 14 of the same year.[2] The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6)[3] and the US edition at $2.00.[2]

The book features the characters of Hercule Poirot, Arthur Hastings and Chief Inspector Japp. The form of the novel is unusual, combining first and third-person narrative. Christie had previously experimented with this approach (famously pioneered by Charles Dickens in Bleak House), in her novel The Man in the Brown Suit. What is unusual in The A.B.C. Murders is that the third-person narrative is supposedly reconstructed by the first-person narrator, Hastings. This approach shows Christie's commitment to experimenting with point of view, famously exemplified by The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Contents

Summary

A serial killer calling himself ABC sends typewritten letters to Poirot giving information about the murders he is about to commit, putting police & Poirot on a chase. ABC also leaves a calling card on the crime scene - ABC railway guides depicting the place of the crime. Poirot investigates this crime with Hastings & Japp, his old friends. ABC commits 4 murders in alphabetical order, posing a serious challenge for Poirot. Poirot, teamed up with Hastings & Japp, has to take help from many new faces. In a seemingly unrelated story, a travelling stocking salesman named Alexander Bonaparte Cust seems to be behaving suspiciously. Cust was drafted, where he suffered an attack on his head. The attack causes headaches & memory blackouts. Cust is an epileptic too. He has visited every crime scene, the day the murders occurred. Could he be the elusive ABC?

Characters in surname alphabetical order

  1. ABC - An unknown cold blooded serial killer & Poirot's nemesis in this novel. He kills his victims in alphabetical order and leaves an ABC railway guide depicting the scene of crime on it as his calling card.
  2. Alice Ascher - ABC's first victim, an old woman running a tobacco shop in Andover. A divorced woman with no kids.
  3. Franz Ascher - Alice's alcoholic husband & a prime suspect of Alice's murder. But he is more terrified of her & may not be the killer.
  4. Elizabeth "Betty" Barnard - ABC's 2nd victim, a young, flirtatious part-time waitress in Bexhill.
  5. Megan Barnard - Betty's elder, sensible and comparatively down to earth sister. She disapproves Betty's ways but wishes well for her and Donald. It is implied that she has feelings for Donald.
  6. Milly Bigley - A co-worker of Betty. Milly is a girl and a plain looking one at that, two things that make her an eyesore in Betty's eyes.
  7. Sir Carmichael Clarke - ABC's 3rd victim, a rich old man in Churston. Sir Carmichael is a childless man married to a cancer stricken wife.
  8. Lady Charlotte Clarke - The widow of Carmichael. She is herself dying due to cancer and kept on various drugs. Her condition has made her delusional and irritated. However, she provides a vital clue to Poirot about the case.
  9. Franklin Clarke - Carmichael's younger brother. He has seen good and bad times of his brother and is Carmichael's immediate successor.
  10. Inspector Crome - An Inspector assigned Betty's murder case. He has a low opinion about Poirot.
  11. Alexander Bonaparte Cust - A travelling salesman with a pompous name. He sells stockings for a living and is an epileptic. He was drafted in war, where he received a blow on head, making him prone to blackouts and severe headaches. His paths seem to cross with ABC's too much.
  12. Roger Emmanuel Downs - A schoolteacher present in cinema hall of Doncaster. ABC killed George instead of him as he was clearly the logical victim. He sat only two seats away from George and realized that George was murdered.
  13. Mary Drower - The niece of Alice. She works in a rich household and has Alice as her only relative.
  14. George Earlsfield - ABC's 4th victim in a cinema hall in Doncaster. He was a barber, mistakenly killed by ABC.
  15. Donald Fraser - Betty's would be fiancee. He is a temperamental person & the prime suspect of Betty's murder.
  16. Thora Grey - Carmichael's young assistant. She regarded him as a father figure. It is implied that she has feelings for Franklin.
  17. Michael Hartigan - An old friend of Cust and an acquaintance of his landlady.
  18. Captain Arthur Hastings - A retired colonel who is Poirot's old friend and companion on the case. An impatient man, whose lack of imagination is often playfully ridiculed by Poirot.
  19. Detective Chief Inspector James Japp - Another old friend of Hercule Poirot, who is saddled with the case.
  20. Lily Marbury - The secretary of Cust's landlady.
  21. Hercule Poirot - A renowned Belgian detective famous for solving cases using his "little grey cells".
  22. Doctor Thompson - A doctor who is assigned the case. He tries to make ABC's psychological profile of ABC.

Plot

The novel chronicles the case from Hastings point of view, after which the events in life of Cust are described. Poirot is aided by his old friends Hastings & Japp, along with Inspector Crome, Dr. Thompson & a Legion of relatives of the deceased. ABC's next kill will be in Doncaster, when a Ledger is going to be run on the day foretold. Lady Clarke gives Poirot an important clue unexpectedly: she saw a shabbily dressed salesman talking with Thora. Based on Thora's testimony, stockings found in Alice's home & facts given by the Legion members, Poirot turns up in Doncaster with everybody else. He tells them to scour every possible area. However, ABC has successfully killed George in a cinema hall in Doncaster & got away with it.

Cust is present in the hall, but has suffered from a blackout. On returning to his hotel, he is surprised to find a knife in his pocket & blood on his sleeve. Realizing the implications, he prepares to escape. He lies to his landlady & Lily that he was in Cheltenham & claims to be going to another trip. However, Michael, a friend of Cust, has seen him in Doncaster. When Michael tells this to Lily, the duo get suspicious & tip off Crome. Crome jumps into action, but Cust manages to escape unnoticed. However, he soon surrenders himself & confesses the crimes. A thorough search of his apartment confirms the suspicions when a large bunch of ABC railway guides are found there. However, Cust has his own story to tell.

He claims that he was hired by a reputed hosiery firm to sell the stockings. He went to the crime scenes as directed by the firm, but he never recalled committing any murder. His typewriter was a gift from the firm. His story falls flat when the firm denies his allegations & his typewriter is found to be used to type the ABC letters as well as his own appointment letter. Cust claims that he thought the guide packets were extra stocking packets, which he was supposed to open when his supply was extinguished. He is nevertheless confident of being a murderer & is arrested. However, Poirot finds it fishy when he learns that Cust doesn't remember typing letters to him. Besides, Cust has a solid alibi for Betty's murder. After being pensive for days(and paying a backhanded compliment to Hastings), Poirot calls a Legion meeting.

Poirot begins by discussing the anomalies. The death of Alice, which could have gone unnoticed, was deliberately publicised by ABC. He sent the letters to Poirot instead of Scotland Yard or a newspaper. This indicated that ABC is a prefectly sane man, trying to mask off a murder as a serial killing. He points out that Cust could never have killed Betty: He had neither the brains, nor would Betty court a man like him. So, ABC was in fact somebody else, trying to frame Cust all along. Donald & Franz didn't have brains to pull it off. Besides, Donald's motive was a poor one:jealousy. Poirot also mentions that ABC misspelled his address on Chusrton letter, something abnormal for him.

On this, Hastings exclaims that the letter was meant to go astray. Poirot points out that this seemingly simple & obvious explanation which was dismissed earlier too, was ironically the truth. There were two reasons why Poirot was chosen as the recipient: 1] He was a foreigner 2] A letter sent to him would go astray, unlike one sent to police. Poirot now points out that Franklin is the real murderer, whose motive was money. He explains that Carmichael would have married a young Thora after becoming a widower, which normally happens with widowers. Thora was young enough to beget children, which would rob Franklin of money. One day, Franklin met Cust in a bar & learnt of his pompous name. There, Franklin thought out ABC.

In a pre-planned way, he disguised himself as the firm & hired Cust. He carried out murders, all the while seeing to it that Cust would implicate himself. After Carmichael, he killed George to throw the scent off him. Franklin laughs off the "theory", but Poirot confronts him with proofs. After Poirot mentions that Franklin's fingerprint was found on one of the keys of Cust's typewriter, Franklin tries to commit suicide. However, Poirot has already surmised this & emptied his revolver. Based on this, Franklin is arrested. Poirot matches up Donald & Megan.

In the epilogue, Cust is released & offered a hefty sum to publish the story. Poirot gives him some advise to increase his profits on this, besides hinting that Cust really needs new glasses if he wants to get rid of the headaches. Hastings is stunned to learn that Poirot bluffed about the "fingerprint on the typewriter", and Poirot joyfully comments that they went on a hunting trip, just as Hastings intended to do earlier in the novel.

Literary significance and reception

The Times Literary Supplement of January 11, 1936 concluded with a note of admiration for the plot that, "If Mrs. Christie ever deserts fiction for crime, she will be very dangerous: no one but Poirot will catch her."[4]

Isaac Anderson in The New York Times Book Review of February 16, 1936 finished his review by stating, "This story is a baffler of the first water, written in Agatha Christie's best manner. It seems to us the very best things she has done, not even excepting Roger Ackroyd.[5]

In The Observer's issue of January 5, 1936, "Torquemada" (Edward Powys Mathers) said, "Ingenuity...is a mild term for Mrs. Christie's gift. In The A.B.C. Murders, rightly chosen by the [crime] club as its book of the month, she has quite altered her method of attack upon the reader, and yet the truth behind this fantastic series of killings is as fairly elusive as any previous truth which Poirot has had to capture for us. The reader adopts two quite different mental attitudes as he reads. At first, and for a great many pages, he is asking himself: "Is Agatha Christie going to let me down? Does she think she can give us this kind of tale as a detective story and get away with it?" Then the conviction comes to him that he has been wronging the authoress, and that he alone is beginning to see through her artifice. In the last chapter he finds, because brilliant circus work with a troop of red horses and one dark herring has diverted his attention from a calm consideration of motive, he has not been wronging, but merely wrong. It is noticeable, by the way, that characters break off at intervals to tell us that we have to do with "a homicidal murderer." We are ready to take this for granted until Mrs. Christie (I wouldn't put it past her) gives us one who isn't."[6]

E. R. Punshon reviewed the novel in the February 6, 1936 issue of The Guardian when he said, "Some readers are drawn to the detective novel by the sheer interest of watching and perhaps anticipating the logical development of a given theme, others take their pleasure in following the swift succession of events in an exciting story, and yet others find themselves chiefly interested in the psychological reactions caused by crime impinging upon the routine of ordinary life. Skilful and happy is that author who can weave into a unity this triple thread. In Mrs. Agatha Christie's new book…the task is attempted with success." He went on to say, "In the second chapter, Mrs. Christie shows us what seems to be the maniac himself. But the wise reader, remembering other tales of Mrs. Christie's, will murmur to himself 'I trust her not; odds on she is fooling me,' and so will continue to a climax it is not 'odds on' but a dead cert he will not have guessed. To an easy and attractive style and an adequate if not very profound sense of character Mrs. Christie adds an extreme and astonishing ingenuity, nor does it very greatly matter that it is quite impossible to accept the groundwork of her tale or to suppose that any stalking-horse would behave so invariably so exactly as required. As at Bexhill, a hitch would always occur. In the smooth and apparently effortless perfection with which she achieves her ends Mrs. Christie reminds one of Noel Coward; she might, indeed, in that respect be called the Noel Coward of the detective novel."[7]

An unnamed reviewer in the Daily Mirror of January 16, 1936 said, "I'm thanking heaven I've got a name that begins with a letter near the end of the alphabet! That's just in case some imitative soul uses this book as a text book for some nice little series of murders." They summed up, "It's Agatha Christie at her best."[8]

Robert Barnard: "A classic, still fresh story, beautifully worked out. It differs from the usual pattern in that we seem to be involved in a chase: the series of murders appears to be the work of a maniac. In fact the solution reasserts the classic pattern of a closed circle of suspects, with a logical, well-motivated murder plan. The English detective story cannot embrace the irrational, it seems. A total success – but thank God she didn't try taking it through to Z."[9]

References to other works

In chapter one Poirot alludes to a situation in the 1935 novel, Three Act Tragedy. Similarly, in the same chapter, Poirot mentions his failed attempt of retirement to grow vegetable marrows as depicted in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

In chapter three of the novel, Poirot lays out the plot of what he considers a perfect crime, a crime so challenging that 'even he' would find it hard to solve. This exact murder — where someone is murdered by one of four people playing bridge in the same room with him — is the subject of Christie's Cards on the Table, which was published later in the same year.

In chapter nineteen, Poirot reflects over his first case on England, where he "brought together two people who loved one another by the simple method of having one of them arrested for murder." This is a reference to the novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and the lovers mentioned are John and Mary Cavendish.

References in other works

The plot of The ABC Murders is mentioned by Detective Inspector John Appleby in Michael Innes′ novel Appleby′s End (1945),[10] and in the first story in volume 39 of the manga Detective Conan (chapters 393-397), which was inspired by the novel.

Film, TV and other adaptations

The first adaptation of the novel was the 1965 film The Alphabet Murders with Tony Randall as Hercule Poirot.

Agatha Christie's Poirot

The novel was adapted in 1992 for the television series Agatha Christie's Poirot with David Suchet playing the role of Hercule Poirot. The adaptation remains faithful to the novel, with some minor changes and characters omitted. In the end the murderer tries to escape while in the novel, he tries to commit suicide. The cast included:

Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple

A four-part episode of the anime Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple is based on the book.

Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders video game

In 2009, Dreamcatcher Interactive released a video game version of the novel for the Nintendo DS. The game has players control Captain Hastings and must solve the mystery by inspecting crime scenes and questioning suspects. In order to appeal to players familiar with the original story, the game also offers the option to play with a different murderer, which results in different clues and testimony throughout the entire game.[11] The game received mediocre reviews, but was commended for its faithful recreation of the source material.[11][12]

Publication history

The first true publication of The A.B.C. Murders occurred in the US with an abridged version appearing in the November 1935 (Volume XCIX, Number 5) issue of Cosmopolitan magazine with illustrations by Frederic Mizen.

The UK serialisation was in sixteen parts in the Daily Express from Monday, November 28 to Thursday December 12, 1935. All of the instalments carried an illustration by Steven Spurrier. This version did not contain any chapter divisions and totally omitted the foreword as well as chapters twenty-six, thirty-two and thirty-five. In addition most of chapters seven and twenty were missing. Along with other abridgements throughout the novel, this serialisation omitted almost forty percent of the text that appeared in the published novel.[13]

International titles

References

  1. ^ The Observer December 29, 1935 (Page 6)
  2. ^ a b American Tribute to Agatha Christie
  3. ^ Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Collins Crime Club – A checklist of First Editions. Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (Page 15)
  4. ^ The Times Literary Supplement January 11, 1936 (Page 37)
  5. ^ The New York Times Book Review February 16, 1936 (Page 25)
  6. ^ The Observer January 5, 1936 (Page 6)
  7. ^ The Guardian February 6, 1936 (Page 7)
  8. ^ Daily Mirror January 16, 1936 (Page 24)
  9. ^ Barnard, Robert. A Talent to Deceive – an appreciation of Agatha Christie - Revised edition (Page 187). Fontana Books, 1990. ISBN 0006374743
  10. ^ Innes, Michael (1945). Appleby′s End. Northumberland Press Limited, Gateshead. pp. 126–28. ISBN 0-575-01540-3. 
  11. ^ a b Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders, by Will Wilson, pocketgamer.co.uk, Retrieved October 19, 2010.
  12. ^ Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders DS Review, by James Newton, nintendolife.com, November 25th, 2009.
  13. ^ Holdings at the British Library (Newspapers - Colindale). Shelfmark: NPL LON LD3 and NPL LON MLD3.

External links