Black Coffee - Softcover

Christie, Agatha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007121113 ISBN 13: 9780007121113

Publisher: Harper Collins Pb, 2002

Synopsis

The new-look series of Hercule Poirot books for the 21st Century. Sir Claud Amory has discovered the formula for a new powerful explosive, which is stolen by one of the large household of relatives and friends. Locking everyone in the library, Sir Claud switches off the lights to allow the thief to replace the formula on the table, no questions asked. When the lights come on, however, he is dead, and Hercule Poirot -- with assistance from Hastings and Inspector Japp -- has to unravel a tangle of family feuds, old flames and suspicious foreigners to find the killer and prevent a global catastophe.

About this title

Review

Subtitled A Hercule Poirot Novel, Black Coffee is actually an Agatha Christie play recrafted as a book meant to be read rather than seen on the stage. The story was first produced in 1930, and Charles Osborne has done little to it except string the dialogue and stage directions together in paragraph form. Christie loyalists will welcome and applaud his dedication to the original, but it does seem as though he could have given it a bit more flair. Still, Poirot himself, bumbling Captain Hastings, and obsequious George are all in good form and it is amusing to find them engaged in another adventure, with an interesting assortment of possible murderers, blackmailers, and innocent (if suspicious) bystanders.

The novel opens as Poirot receives a summons at his breakfast table from England's premier physicist, Sir Claud Amory. Busy working on a new formula necessary for England's defense in the Second World War, Amory suspects a member of his household of espionage. Of course, by the time Poirot and sidekick Hastings arrive at the scientist's country house, he is suddenly and mysteriously dead. Amory himself turns out to have been not quite nice, and his family, regardless of his scientific efforts, is pretty pleased with the new state of affairs. Still, Poirot manages both to save the more amiable members of the household from themselves and to protect the secrets of the British Empire. The novel is warmly evocative of another time and place and a welcome reminder of vintage Christie. --K.A. Crouch

From the Publisher

A publishing event: The return of Hercule Poirot in the last novel to spring from the imagination of the world's greatest mystery writer.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Collins Pb
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0007121113
• ISBN 13: 9780007121113
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 208