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    Five Little Pigs: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition
    Five Little Pigs: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition
    Five Little Pigs: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition
    Audiobook6 hours

    Five Little Pigs: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition

    Written by Agatha Christie

    Narrated by Hugh Fraser

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    In Agatha Christie’s classic, Five Little Pigs, beloved detective Hercule Poirot races to solve a case from out of the past.

    Beautiful Caroline Crale was convicted of poisoning her husband, but just like the nursery rhyme, there were five other “little pigs” who could have done it: Philip Blake (the stockbroker), who went to market; Meredith Blake (the amateur herbalist), who stayed at home; Elsa Greer (the three-time divorcée), who had her roast beef; Cecilia Williams (the devoted governess), who had none; and Angela Warren (the disfigured sister), who cried all the way home.

    Sixteen years later, Caroline’s daughter is determined to prove her mother’s innocence, and Poirot just can’t get that nursery rhyme out of his mind.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJul 3, 2012
    ISBN9780062229960
    Author

    Agatha Christie

    Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.

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    Reviews for Five Little Pigs

    4.5/5

    345 ratings41 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I love mysteries, and this one sucked me right in as I tried to figure it out as the story progressed.
    • 4/5
      The book is well written. It reminds me too much of a soap opera.
    • 4/5
      This is a solid Agatha Christie which uses an interesting device of looking back at a crime that seems already solved. Poirot is approached by the daughter of a man who was murdered and who's wife was convicted for the crime, which she has only recently learned about. She asks Poirot to find out the truth. The way he does this is by interviewing the five suspects and asking them to write about their memories of the day of the murder and around it. This adds a nice change of voice in the book as their remembrances are presented, which gives the reader another sense of the characters. The story itself is one of the simpler ones of Christie's but this is a good book for showing her skill in the study of place and character.
    • 3/5
      Substance: Poirot is asked to solve an old case, and prove that the woman convicted of murder was innocent. Interviews and written accounts create a "Rashomen" style view of the crime, but are boring in repetition. However, the clues are fairly laid.Style: The change in title totally obscures a carefully constructed use of the "Five Little Pigs" nursery rhyme in the text. Otherwise, it is a standard Christie, with perhaps a little more liveliness in characterization.
    • 4/5
      Very good story and I thoroughly enjoyed this audio book.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this story. Sheer genius. One of my absolute favorites. I’m shocked it isn’t more popular and widely known given all its brilliant plot twists.
    • 4/5
      Again, Christie never misses. Per usual, this one is really good, nothing jaw dropping. Classic and worthwhile.
    • 3/5
      As always, Poirot delivers.
      I found this one a little slow, more than others.
      However, Poirot is always great to read.
    • 5/5
      Such a beautiful rendition. Hugh Fraser's voice spruces up the book.

      Recommended: ? ?
    • 5/5
      Amazing story Agatha Christie novels never cease to stimulate me.
    • 4/5
      There are five remaining suspects for a murder that happened 16yrs ago. The woman who was convicted at the time died shortly afterwards and her daughter is convinced of her innocence. She asks Poirot to investigate. Each of the five characters writes down how they remember the events of the days leading up to the murder and the murder itself as well as their opinions on the victim and the woman found guilty of his murder. Poirot analyses each perspective and reveals the truth at the end in typical style. A classic Poirot story, but the way the story is told makes it a bit repetative and the ending came as no surprise to me, although perhaps I have read too many Agatha Christie novels.
    • 5/5
      This book is so entertaining. The combination of Agatha Christie's words and hugh Fraser's voice acting make the story leap out and make an unbearable car ride fly by.
    • 3/5
      The puzzle and solution are clever, but I didn't warm to any of the characters, and the story is told in a way that makes the process of detection pretty opaque. I prefer ones where you get to hear the detective's hypotheses and plans as you go.
    • 5/5
      Sixteen years ago everyone believed it was an open and shut case. The evidence irrefutably pointed at Caroline Crale poisoning her husband, Amayas. Caroline simply had enough of her husband’s cheating ways, which everyone kept trying to justify as the painter’s “artistic personality”. Every clue traced back to Caroline: the staged fingerprints, the stolen poison, the motive. Now that her daughter, Carla, has become of age and is preparing to marry, she receives a posthumous letter in the mail from her mother stating that she was innocent. Carla petitions the famous Hercule Poirot to find out the truth.In an age without DNA databases, fingerprint scanners, and high-tech equipment, reopening a long closed case would be a daunting task for any detective. Hercule Poirot doesn’t see the Crale case that way. He sees this case as a challenge in to the psychology of murder and quickly begins to track down those involved. There are five very clear key players who were present at the time of the murder. Poirot enlists each of them to provide their side of the story through both interview and written narrative. What he finds are conflicting memories and motives associated with each person. Did Caroline Crale actually murder her husband or was it one of the five other people closest to him?Chrsitie strikes again! I was so confident I knew the truth about the case this time. The style of writing in FIVE LITTLE PIGS was a mixture between Poirot interviewing the five eyewitnesses and them also each writing their own narrative about the events. This unique mixture let the reader see multiple points of view and spot differences between the retellings in an easy-to-read format. As usual, my favorite part of the story was when Poirot gathers everyone in the same room and reveals the truth behind the case and calls each character out on the lies they have been telling. I highly recommend this tale to anyone looking for an introduction to Agatha Christie and her famous detective, Hercule Poirot!
    • 5/5
      What an amazing story and beautifully read by Hugh Fraser!!
    • 4/5
      Oooo very good though I didn't appreciate Christie's strange stance on feminism being the same as misandry. Quite a different novel from her previous seeing as here Poirot investigates a murder in a purely psychological way seeing as it happened 16 years earlier and obviously no clues are left and all there is to due is to interrogate people. The end is very interesting and gives a lot to think about regarding the privileges of the peerage. Caroline and Angela are both very interesting female characters.
    • 1/5
      I tried to like this book. Just like I've tried to like other Agatha Christie books but I never can seem to get into them. I get lost in the sheer number of characters and the mind-numbingly boring dialogue. This is one very rare case were the TV adaptations are better written than the original books.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this as a light read
    • 5/5
      This is not my favourite Christie, it's not even my favourite Poirot, but it's definitely a masterwork. This is where Poirot gets to show he doesn't need the cigarette ash and bits of cloth to solve a mystery as he re-investigates a murder that occured 16 years before. It's also a nice antidote to those mysteries where the detective is given more information than the reader. Here we are given exactly the same information as Poirot and allowed to try to figure out whodunit along with him.It's not perfect, I found the characterisation of Philip Blake a bit flat, but I love all the little character details for Poirot, like when he tells himself off for thinking in nursery rhymes (again) and how he chooses to present himself to the five people present on the day of the murder.Definitely worth a read.
    • 2/5
      I like the ending but the second third of the story is a waste of time. The crime took place sixteen years before the time of the story and Poirot spends his time interviewing the little pigs to get their version of what had happened. The book could then easily go right to the reconstruction (third part of the book) chapters but instead it choses to languish for another hundred pages on written accounts of the interviews we've just read! ARGH!!!! Do yourself a favor and skip the second act for the third.
    • 4/5
      England, ca 1942Hercule Poirot bliver opsøgt af Carla Lemarchant, som egentlig er døbt Caroline Crale. Hendes mor Caroline Crale, pigenavn Spalding, blev dømt for giftmord på faderen Amyas Crale og døde i fængslet. Amyas var kunstmaler og havde stribevis af affærer med andre kvinder.Carla er overbevist om at moderen var uskyldig og hyrer Poirot til at bevise det.Han tager sagen og finder 5 mulige mistænkte, Philip Blake, vekselerer. Blakes ældre bror, Meredith Blake, godsejer og hobbykemiker. Elsa Greer, heltedyrker, som forsøgte at gafle Amyas for alvor. Angela Warren, Carolines stedsøster. Cecilie Williams, guvernante for Angela.Poirot snakker med alle fem og får dem til at skrive ned hvad der skete den dag for 16 år siden.Udfra dette kommer han frem til at Caroline troede at det var Angela, der havde gjort det, men faktisk var det Elsa, fordi Amyas havde gjort det klart at han ikke ville forlade Caroline.Glimrende Poirot-mysterie.
    • 4/5
      Carla Lemarchant, a young woman of 21, approaches Hercule Poirot and requests that he take over her case: her father Amyas Crale, a well-known painter, was murdered sixteen years ago and her mother imprisoned for the crime; in a letter written to her daughter on her deathbed in prison, which only now has come into Carla’s possession, Caroline Crale assured her of her innocence. Poirot visits the different parties involved in Caroline’s trial and the five eyewitnesses, and attempts to reconstruct the events leading to Amyas Crale’s murder and unmask the true killer.Curiously for an Agatha Christie novel, almost the entire plot takes place in retrospect, told from different points of view by the surviving five eyewitnesses who were with Amyas Crale on the fateful day, and whoever requires their reading material to feature more action and fewer words will definitely struggle to get on with this short novel. As often with this author the clues are in the details and very careful reading is required to pick up on them. The ending is unusual in that the murderer is able to walk away as Poirot doesn’t have any solid proof to present to the police.
    • 4/5
      I thought I had this one figured out! I was so sure I had the answer of who-done-it, only to be wrong once again! Oh well better luck next time!
    • 5/5
      Five Little Pigs was the most interesting scenario of all the Christie mysteries I have read this summer, excepting The Labours of Hercules. A young lady asks Poirot to investigate her father's murder from when she was a young child, of which her mother was convicted and died in prison. Caroline, the mother, had written a letter expressing her innocence to her daughter, to be opened when she was 21. The way Poirot smooth-talked the five witnesses, suspects, piggies, whatever that were involved in the poisoning of a fairly famous painter was excellent. And the misleading trail of clues was a well planned trap. For once I thought I had actually solved a murder mystery using Poirot's methods, but I was wrong and overlooked a few clues. I did grasp some of the more nuanced clues and made inferences in the discrepancies of the 5 written testamonials that the monsieur collected for his, ahem, book he was consulting on. Oh well. I don't think the Chritie mysteries are meant to be solved as the clues are often written in misleading ways, and the fun is seeing how they are properly threaded together. I'm glad these books are rather short as I think I would quickly tire of one that was too long.
    • 5/5
      "Five Little Pigs" is my favourite Hercule Poirot book, and probably my 2nd favourite Christie work (beyond the dazzling "And Then There Were None").

      Years after her mother died in a jail cell, a murderess' daughter comes to Poirot to ask him to re-open the case. Through lengthy interviews with the five others present on the day of an artist's murder, Poirot must unravel the haze of time present and past to uncover the true murderer. There is something so psychologically compelling in these characters, particularly the artist's self-absorbed mistress, that draws this above Christie's usual output. And although the artist and his wife are only seen through five different accounts, they come across as some of the most layered characters Christie ever produced. Poirot himself isn't all that relevant (indeed, many of the post-war novels seem to wish he wasn't in them), but only someone of his decades of experience could have unravelled this one.

      Poirot ranking: 1st of 38.
    • 4/5
      The daughter of a woman convicted 16 years before of murdering her husband is convinced her mother is innocent and asks Poirot to reopen the case. Poirot does take it , questioning those who were present at the time. I read it so long ago that all I recall is that he does, of course, find that someone else did the murder.
    • 4/5
      This is definitely not the best book from Agatha Christie but it is still an excellent read. And I have read some much worse from The Queen.

      The thing is that this story is a bit predictable, there are many things important for the story that I weren't surprise to me. Like, for example, that the marriage of Amyas and Caroline was, in fact, very successful and that Amyas was not planning a divorce and leaving his wife. And hence the simple path to further conclusions that did not deviate from the truth. Although I have to admit that initially I suspected that the murderess is Caroline's half-sister Angela, in accordance with the solution proposed by Hercules Poirot himself. But then I became more and more convinced that Amyas was not going to leave his wife to be with Elsa. Which gives Elsa a perfect motive. So the final solution did not surprise me at all and the murderer turns out to be the person I suspected most of the time.

      Still, this is a very enjoyable read, totally worth reading.
    • 4/5
      This one is fun, but I found it rather average by Hercule Poirot standards considering how often it shows up on "best of" Agatha Christie lists.The framing device she uses here, solving a murder 16 years after the fact, is intriguing because so much of the trail has gone cold for Poirot. He must rely almost entirely on the memories of those who were involved, and that doesn't include the most significant of all witnesses, the accused, because she's been dead for nearly as long.
    • 5/5
      This is my perfect Poirot. Sixteen years ago Amyas Crane was poisoned by his wife - but in her last letter to her daughter Caroline Crane protested her innocence and her daughter wants to find out what really happened. The five little pigs of the title are the five main witnesses to the crime, any of whom could have really killed Amyas.
    • 4/5
      Poirot revisits a case in which Carla Lemarchant's mother received a conviction some sixteen years earlier. Carla's certainty of her mother's innocence in spite of a note that on the surface seems to incriminate her convinces Poirot to investigate. He speaks with the five suspects and comes to his own conclusions. I was happy my conclusion matched his!