This isn’t the ideal comparison, because 007 was invented later, but “The Big Four” plays like lightweight James Bond. (Her interest in larger-scale crime is tipped in “The Secret Adversary,” but it’s more effectively in the background there.) Poirot as James Bond? “The Big Four” is strangely structured, with bizarre choices of emphasis as Christie shoehorns her strength – Poirot solves mini-mysteries, all of which feature The Big Four’s hand – into something she’d like to be good at (international intrigue), but isn’t quite. I know it’s less successful than her single-site mysteries because I wasn’t drawn back to each sitting with the book for the whodunit, but rather for the oddity value. Agatha Christie tries something new in “The Big Four” (1927), pitting Poirot against a global illuminati.
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