Book Club

Christie's Plays

Agatha Christie wrote over a dozen plays, the most famous of which is The Mousetrap - the longest running play in the world. Here you can discuss each play in detail.

Warning: These discussions may contain spoilers!

Black Coffee

Moderator1 09 Dec 09 at 8:12 a.m. GMT

Poirot and Hastings are asked to visit atomic scientist, Sir Claude Amory but when they get there they find he has been murdered and a lethal formula has been stolen from his home. Poirot is too late to save Sir Claude, but can he find the formula and protect England from destruction?

This play is unusual for a Christie in that it contains Hercule Poirot.  Christie was not fond of having him in her plays as she felt he overpowered the other characters.  So, does it work here?  If it wasn't Poirot solving the case who could it be?

Login or register to add posts and reply

15 replies

Reverse order

notguilty 13 Mar 12 at 5:42 p.m. GMT

Just finished "Black Coffee" the novel.  Not a bad little book.  Never did read the play so I cannot justly make any comparisons.  Am a little disappointed though that M. Poirot and Capt Hastings don't appear until about one third of the way into the book.  But that didn't change the flow of the story.

I could tell immediately though that Dame Agatha did not write the novel.  Her style was absent.  Particularly in some choice words.  The vocabulay appeared to be more "modern". 

GKCfan 09 Feb 12 at 10:01 p.m. GMT

I'm not sure– please double-check this with your brother the beekeeper– but some people have a severe allergic reaction to honey.  It may consist of reactions to the flower pollen that goes into the honey.  It does not come from being allergic to beestings– an allergy to being stung by a bee is very different from being allergic to honey.  I think that an allergy to honey is similar to being allergic to beeswax.

wotan198 09 Feb 12 at 8:57 p.m. GMT

a question about the play:  at one point, Miss Armory says she can't eat caramels because of the beeswax.  Anybody know why?  I'm now working as dramaturg for a production in Ohio, and can't find anything -- even asked my brother the beekeeper, and he had no idea what might be wrong about injesting beeswax.  Help?

ErkutSoyer 14 Jul 11 at 3:24 p.m. GMT

Other books more excited than Black Coffee.Excited Agatha Christie Books lovers don't like this book.Replications preponderate in book.Especially Doctor Carelli's and Lucia's replications preponderate.If you borred in autumn or spring,you should read Black Coffee (Maybe my last word is wrong.I'm sorry.I'm Turkish.)

svcodeman 30 Mar 11 at 6:33 p.m. GMT

I read it a while ago, and now that I think about it, after reading your posts, my aunt who gave me Black Coffee, did say to me it wasn't Christie's best work.

NightRayDuck 20 Mar 11 at 2:52 a.m. GMT

Lone_Wolf.. I have to agree on that about the novelization for Black Coffee. There's that explanation that Christie thought stage plays ought to go at quite a different pace than novels. Still, the particular writing in Black Coffee really looks like "string the stage directions and lines into paragraphs". Another novelized play, Unexpected Guest, gave me a similar impression although to a lesser extent. Details such as "Character A sat down on the right-hand side of the sofa" might help the actors during a play, but has very little use for a reader (unless a particular trick of hiding or altering the look of something is being explained). I think Spider's Web goes better as a prose / novelized play script. It doesn't contain a whole lot of "window here, curtain there, chairs around table and more chairs by the other wall"; mostly, only the setup necessary to describe several items that the characters try to find during the story.

Lone_Wolf 19 Mar 11 at 9:45 a.m. GMT

Skipped though the novelization in the book shop. Had the impression that Osborne didn't really understand the Christie literary style and just prefunctorily and technically changed the play's literary form into one of a novel.

NightRayDuck 19 Mar 11 at 6:15 a.m. GMT

I am going to answer it quite simply: the case is of a setup where an expert with the discretion must be called in immediately. I think that would have to override any aversion that Christie might have about putting Poirot on stage.

Mr_Graves 16 Mar 11 at 11:43 p.m. GMT

Please don't feel bed at all! I can appreciate how you felt, having worked it out, and after a time one picks up certain patterns in Agatha Christie's works. Not all of the time, but with murder by numbers like this it can be quite easy to spot the murderer. My first was "Peril at End House", which I thought was so ingenious at the time. It was a great story, but I think I might have cottoned on a lot sooner had I read it after other books. Pay no attention to our cynicism! 

LittleMissMurder 10 Mar 11 at 3:08 a.m. GMT

The other comments on this post make me feel bad. I thought myself so smart for having it all worked out before Poirot. I knew who the killer would be and what was going to happen and how it happened. There were a few minor details that I had not worked out, but isn't Poirot famous for making a case out of those little details? Now that everyone says it was so obvious and predictable...I feel bad. It was only my second Christie novel and my first containing Hastings, so I was oblivious to his narrative perspective being off. All I can say about the book, is that is wasn't a true Christie.

Mr_Graves 09 Mar 11 at 6:08 a.m. GMT

That is a point. It was certainly strange that we saw Hastings as a character, rather than narrator... Perhaps Mr Osborne was not confident with writing Hastings' "voice".

Mr_Graves 09 Mar 11 at 6:08 a.m. GMT

That is a point. It was certainly strange that we saw Hastings as a character, rather than narrator... Perhaps Mr Osborne was not confident with writing Hastings' "voice".

ChristieFanBlogger 07 Mar 11 at 5:09 p.m. GMT

I was bothered that the Charles Osborne novel was written in third person, but had Hastings as a character.  Aren't all the Hastings novels written in first person, as if Hastings were chronicaling the case for Poirot?  Why did he divert from that traditional format when adapting the play as a novel?

Mr_Graves 06 Mar 11 at 7:53 p.m. GMT

I'm with you! I only got through the first two chapters of Charles Osborne's novelisation to realise that the dialogue was lifeless, and the plot was going absolutely nowhere. It is predicable, as you say, xrysoula, and I'm curious: Did Agatha Christie reuse her idea of hiding paper in a vase on the mantlepiece because she couldn't be bothered, or was it for nostalgic reasons, as she used it ten years before the play was performed? I would say that she shouldn't have bothered with this play at all. Such a pity, as I found the title and blurb description so very intriguing... 

xrysoula 05 Sep 10 at 10:43 p.m. GMT

Ι just finished the book and I can see why noone bothered to answer until now. It is terribly old-fashioned, filled with cliches and stereotypes, completely flat. The plot is childish, the characters indifferent-especially Hastings is made to look like a complete idiot. Τhere 's no climax, no twist, absolutely nothing to keep the reader going. You can tell exactly what everyone will say and do in advance, and, of course, the end is SO VERY predictable.

Ι 'm afraid the one good thing I can say about this book is that Poirot doesn 't overpower the rest, there seems to be a balance there. But then, this certain mystery didn 't need him, anyway. Japp would have worked it out just fine on his own, I believe.