Hercule Poirot's Christmas
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Hercule Poirot's Christmas
Narrated by:
Hugh Fraser
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Hugh Fraser
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By:
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Agatha Christie
About this listen
The latest in this classic unabridged Agatha Christie audio collection, read by Hugh Fraser.
It’s Christmas Eve. The Lee family reunion is shattered by a deafening crash of furniture, followed by a high-pitched wailing scream. Upstairs, the tyrannical Simeon Lee lies dead in a pool of blood, his throat slashed.
But when Hercule Poirot, who is staying in the village with a friend for Christmas, offers to assist, he finds an atmosphere not of mourning but of mutual suspicion. It seems everyone had their own reason to hate the old man…
©1939 Agatha Christie Limited. A Chorion Company. All rights reserved (P)2002 HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, London UKListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
‘You yearned for a “good violent murder with lots of blood”. So this is your special story – written for you.’
Agatha Christie
'There is irresistible simplicity and buoyancy of a Christmas treat about it all'
Times Literary Supplement
I really like the way the story graduates to a round the table kind of finale.
Christmas Poirot's style!! A murder
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My all time favourite detective
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Not a very merry story
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I'm not usually a great fan of the howdunit style of mystery, mainly because they often descend into technical details and alibis at the expense of characterisation and motivation. But in this one, Christie shows that it’s possible to work a howdunit element into a more traditional whodunit style of plot. The howdunit element is fun and not quite as incredible as these things sometimes are in vintage mysteries, but the real strength of the book, as always with Christie, is in the motives and dynamics of the characters.
Simeon Lee is a perfect victim. An elderly man, he has spent a lifetime bullying his now long-deceased wife and his sons who for the most part resent him bitterly but still hang around in the hopes of getting their share of his money. His fortune was originally made in the diamond fields of South Africa long ago, and there is the question of whether something from his murky past there has come back to haunt him. There is also a puzzle of some missing uncut diamonds that he kept for sentimental reasons in his safe, so perhaps robbery was the motive. It’s fair to say he will not be greatly mourned even by his nearest and dearest, so happily the reader doesn’t have to waste any grief on him.
To be honest, I found the four sons and their wives weren’t perhaps as well characterised as usual – even quite late on I was still struggling to remember who was married to whom and what each brother’s story was. In fact, it took me ages to work out exactly how many sons there were! (This may well have been because I was listening rather than reading – as I’ve said before, my concentration does tend to dip more with audiobooks meaning I occasionally miss out on bits of info.) The outsiders to the main family seemed better developed – Stephen Farr, the son of Simeon’s old partner out in South Africa who has turned up unexpectedly and been invited to stay for Christmas, and Pilar, the daughter of Simeon’s daughter who blotted her copybook by marrying an entirely unsuitable Spaniard. Pilar’s personality is a discordant note of exotic passion among all these middle-aged and disillusioned siblings and their equally dull wives.
Is it fair play? Hmm, perhaps, but as with all howdunits it gets a bit tangled up in who was in what corridor at the time the butler was breaking the cup in the library just before the clock struck eight and was the window open or closed at the time, and so on. And frankly the solution came completely out of the blue – it seemed so unlikely that the “clue” that Poirot had spotted had somehow not been spotted by everyone else. I know that’s vague, but to explain it would be a spoiler. But as far as I’m concerned it’s one of the weakest crucial clues I’ve come across in a Christie book. It isn’t misdirection that makes people miss it – for the people in the story it must have been complete lack of observational skills, while for the reader I felt we really weren’t given a fair chance to spot it for ourselves.
However, despite these criticisms, I enjoyed the story and the Christmas setting, and Poirot is on his usual excellent form at weaselling out secrets from all and sundry. And although the solution sprang from nowhere, nonetheless it all makes sense and is quite satisfying once Poirot explains it. Not a favourite, then, but still an enjoyable read.
Ho! Ho! Aaarghhh!
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Brilliant
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