Five Little Pigs

Amyas Crale's passion for painting and women made him famous. His murder made him infamous. Sixteen years earlier his jealous wife was tried, convicted and sentenced to life for a notorious slaying. Now their daughter Carla, a young woman convinced her mother is innocent, has presented Hercule Poirot with a brilliant challenge: to clear her mother's name by returning to the scene of the murder and finding the fatal flaw in the perfect crime.

Year: 1943
Detective: Hercule Poirot
Location: England

Cast of characters

Hercule Poirot. Also: Meredith and Philip Blake, Caroline Crale, Sir Montague Depleach, Lord Dittisham, Alfred Edmunds, Quentin Fogg, Elsa Greer, Inspector Hale, Caleb Jonathan, Carla Lemarchant, George Mayhew, John Rattery, Angela Warren, Cecilia Williams

Publishing history

Publishing: First published in 1943 by William Collins Sons & Co.in London, and as 'Murder in Retrospect', by Dodd, Mead & Co. in New York. Stage: Adapted by Agatha Christie into the play 'Go Back for Murder', which was presented at the Duchess Theatre in London on March 25, 1960. Hercule Poirot was eliminated as a character in the play. Adapted for ITV in 2003 with David Suchet playing Poirot.

Notes and reviews

This was the first of five novels that Christie wrote concerning a murder in retrospect. The novel is dedicated to Professor Glanville, who persuaded the author to write Death Comes as the End.

Murder methods:

One Poisoning.

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