Mystery Review: Five Little Pigs is Agatha Christie does Rashomon (which didn't hit the screen till eight years later, though its source story was published in 1922). I've got to give Christie credit: she's always trying something different, willing to mix it up, do the less expected. Here she has Poirot solve a 16-year-old crime, interviewing and getting written accounts from all the main actors (five in number ... ) in the case. Although this was above average Poirot, I thought I'd figured it out (though doubting myself as I'm never sure with Ms. Agatha) and was right. The red herring was just too obvious (though that was my first guess, of course). The Five Little Pigs moniker is kind of tacked on unnecessarily and unusually I preferred the American title, Murder in Retrospect. Usually American publishers butcher her titles, for no apparent reason. Here no Hastings, no love story, no bodies piling up. Instead several accounts of the murder each with variations for the reader to dissect. Although this is more of puzzle mystery, we still get to see through Poirot's eyes and play along as he sifts the evidence. Five Little Pigs was Christie knowing how to build a lifelike mystery on a sturdy puzzle frame. [4★]
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