WATCHING THE DETECTIVES

ASubjective Ranking of Screen ofAgatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot

Sean Patterson

When I was about eight or nine years old, shortly after we got cable (probably sometime a rainy Sunday afternoon watching the 1974 film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder on HBO, which meant that it had no commercials, which was virtually unheard-of at the time; through in a single sitting without pausing it, which is virtually unheard-of today.

It was my first introduction to the works of Agatha Christie; and I was captivated by indomitable, idiosyncratic detective. It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that I wanted would happen upon a dead body under suspicious circumstances and have to figure out whodunnit. and without on-demand access to any other films featuring him, I turned to the novels, of Christie introduced Poirot in her first novel, 1920’s TheMysteriousAffairatStyles. She detectives of the day, including Sherlock Holmes. Poirot, however, disdains Holmes’s method to rely on his so-called “little grey cells,” his intellect, to solve his cases. Christie introduces

Poirot was an extraordinary looking little man. He was hardly more than five feet, four with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible. have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandified little man limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian had been extraordinary, and he had achieved triumphs by unravelling some of the most (Christie, TheMysteriousAffairatStyles)