This book tells the story of Agatha Christie's fictional detective decade by decade after his first appearance in 1920's Death on the Nile, exploring his appearances not only in the original novels, short stories and plays but also across stage, screen and radio productions. The hardback edition includes more than 400 illustrations.
Why did I ever invent this detestable, bombastic, tiresome little creature?' sighed Christie in a 1937 article ... Agatha Christie’s Poirot, a one-stop guide to all things Poirot, an exhaustive catalog of all manifestations of the little Belgian in any conceivable medium, from novel to story to radio play to movie to graphic novel to computer game, provides us with a beautifully succinct answer ... Expertly summarizing Christie’s novels, Mr. Aldridge is always careful not to disclose their endings, which yields some artfully wrought sentences tiptoeing around the secrets they can’t share—an effective strategy that will inspire readers to turn to Poirot novels they don’t yet know or no longer remember ... packed with...stories as well as excellent excerpts from contemporary reviews of Christie’s novels. A gifted storyteller familiar with everything Christie has ever written, Mr. Aldridge knows even more than he lets on, occasionally placing, as if he were himself a crime writer, little textual clues only true Christie devotees will recognize ... In Mr. Aldridge’s perceptive assessment, 'The character of Poirot is bigger than one man, perhaps even bigger than his creator.'
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World exhaustively and entertainingly surveys the book, stage, radio, magazine and film appearances of that fussy little Belgian ... encyclopedic ... Aldridge particularly shines in his behind-the-scenes account of the David Suchet television series ... Aldridge’s text should have been more closely copy-edited, not just to catch some minor factual errors—forthrightly listed on his website—but also to fix a number of loose and baggy sentences.
... well researched and full of detail this current volume is, something for the reader’s 'little gray cells' to savor ... It is loaded with juicy anecdotes and excerpts from contemporary reviews, and it includes much on the actors who portrayed him over the years—Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, David Suchet, and Kenneth Branagh, plus less well–known names from earlier decades. Aldridge is careful not to spoil the endings, which may encourage readers to take up titles they had missed or forgotten. The author provides an accessible history for each of the novels, short stories, and story collections in which the idiosyncratic detective appears and then places each into the context of Christie’s personal life and writing career.
