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Rate Five Little Pigs

detectivepauljohn 03 Feb 09 at 10:03 a.m. GMT

I rate it 9/10. This book is really good! The plots, characters, settings and twists are amazing! It was a bit(just a bit) boring. Almost all scenes are really wonderful and excellent! Some scenes are romantic. The ending was very surprising! My favorite characters are Cecilia Williams and Meredith Blake. I didn't suspected the murderer but at first I suspected him/her but later I didn't but when Hercule Poirot revealed all the secrets I was surprised!

How about you? What do you think, girls and guys?

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36 replies

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rossana 16 Nov 11 at 8:32 a.m. GMT

9/10. I read this book last summer and I loved it. I like cold cases and I like the fact that the same events are related from 5 different points of view.

LadyMary 15 Nov 11 at 7:13 p.m. GMT

I have not read the book, but I have seen the movie with Suchet.  I usually want to read the book after I have seen the movie...to make sure they were true to the original.  I had always suspected the movie makers adapted their story to fit into some idea of what they think would be popular today.  I think they were terribly wrong and misguided in their thinking.  Their version of the story made me not want to read the book.

But...now that you have given the book a good report, I think I will look it up and check it out!  So, thank you!

I don't get the movie makers.  I don't think they realize who the audience is for Poirot stories.   

Vermillion 13 Jan 11 at 11:42 a.m. GMT

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I think i don't hate Simon as much as Amyas Crale because I abhor Linnet Ridgeway and sympathize with Caroline. Linnet is annoying (the reason why i delay reading Death on the Nile) and she more or less deserved the result, while Caroline is a thoroughly nice lady, who should have had a better husband. Maybe it's also because Simon is so simple and loves only himself, i see him as a mere animal and don't bother to criticise him. 

Christopher_Wren 26 Dec 10 at 3:14 p.m. GMT

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As far, as I remember, Poirot thought that Simon never really loved Jackie. At least not the way, she loved him. One, who loves, and one, who loves to be loved. I think that was Poirot's opinion about Jackie and Simon from the very beginning, when he saw them in that restaurant.

emilytrefusis 02 Nov 10 at 10:30 p.m. GMT

9 I liked the book because the limited number of suspects and the strong psychology. The repetitive parts were a bit unusual, but I would count it among the five best Poirots.

Puffinjill 02 Nov 10 at 7:01 a.m. GMT

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Yes, Lone Wolf, I think Simon's overpowering passion would always have been money and not another human being. I don't think he knows how to love anyone else with same intensity. Sadly Jackie is cursed with the type of nature that compels her to become obsessed with the one man she does love to the exclusion of all else. She would do anything to hold on to her man and give him all he desires, and he is reckless enough to risk anything for the one thing he does want. What a dangerous and unhappy combination.

Lone_Wolf 31 Oct 10 at 8:37 p.m. GMT

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Well, though she didn't have the money, she was able to propose a scheme to get it.

I don't think that Simon had no affection for Jackie at all, but I think that he, in general, was a man unable to feel any deep emotions. Maybe Jackie's magnetism had some influence on him - an influence under which people with weak will often fall. Maybe he couldn't really explain to himself why he sticks with Jackie when there're richer women out there.

Re ATTWN: Simon killed for money and all the good things it can get, the ATTWN murderer killed because of sadism (delivering justice was a condition under which he can deliver pleasure from his acts, not the point of them). Not sure which I would prefer.

MissQuin 31 Oct 10 at 11:50 a.m. GMT

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Death On The Nile: Well if you see it that way Lone Wolf that's fine. It's just I think Simon could have easily have ditched Jackie because she had no money. Not being as clever as Jackie, she pointed out he would have probably just posioned his wife and hoped he got away with it. He lacks imagination.

Simon Doyle is completely different to the Then There Were None (spoilers) murderer. You might be able to see some vauge reasoning why Simon killed, but getting into the mind of JW that's not something I can do. JW just seems inhuman whereas Simon is fallible

 There's no kind of reasoning behind those crimes or anything other than pure evil. They would have my vote be the most villianness killer in Chrisite. The fact that Chrisite could get into the warped mind of someone with that, that's a gift.

Lone_Wolf 31 Oct 10 at 11:26 a.m. GMT

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DoTN:

I don't think that Simon loved Jackie - I don't think he was really capable of loving anyone. I interpert his character as too shallow to love anything beyond all the good things that money can get you in life.

Jackie, now - she certainly did love Simon, though it was very unhealthy, obsessive love.

Basically, Simon is a villain, and people don't attack villains, because they're, well, villains.

MissQuin 31 Oct 10 at 9:46 a.m. GMT

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SPOILERS!! DEATH ON THE NILE: Nice to see you Jill. I'm not saying that the crime Simon committed was ok because he loved Jackie. Because it was deplorable, killing his wife as she slept.

But Simon and Jackie's love for each other, that's the driving force of the whole story. If  he didn't love her back, it wouldn't have had such a powerful impact on me at the very end. I find the last page of DOTN so deeping moving. I got rather teary at the end, but maybe it's just me? So I still feel that Simon loving Jackie was an essential part of the story.

Puffinjill 31 Oct 10 at 8:36 a.m. GMT

Does it? I don't think loving one person - no matter how genuinely - is a redeeming quality at all. If they ARE capable of these kinds of feelings, I don't understand why treating those they are supposed to love with disrespect and a lack of concern isn't abhorrant to them. Perhaps I'm talking naively and idealistically, I don't know. But they do make fascinating and complex characters, even if their behaviour is against our own moral standards.

MissQuin 30 Oct 10 at 11:23 a.m. GMT

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death on the niles spoilers

I'm sorry Lone Wolf I didn't make myself clear- People who read the books often see Amyas and John as cheating swines. But oddly enough Simon isn't mentioned among them. But as Simon loved Jackie then he gives him one redeeming quality.

Lone_Wolf 30 Oct 10 at 11:15 a.m. GMT

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Re Simon Doyle - since Christie gives no sympathy to Simon at all, he isn't criticised - criticising him is pointless, like criticising any other average murderer. Whatever sympathy there is, it's reserved for Jackie.

Lone_Wolf 30 Oct 10 at 11:11 a.m. GMT

Infidelity doesn't rate that high on the place of sins in my book. I dissaprove of it, but not to the point of "he almost got what he deserved". Actually, since Caroline was always ready to forgive Amyans as long as he returned, while Gerda didn't know about John's infidelity at all, I'd rate John's behaviour as being worse.

YMMV.

MissQuin 30 Oct 10 at 10:34 a.m. GMT

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I'm with Goleafs, I find cheating abhorrent, but that doesn't mean that Amyas didn't love his wife. It's not the ideal romantic kind of love where both partners are faithful, but love none of the less. Amyas clearly must have been very selfish, to bring his mistress home with him.

But Caroline did a terrible thing to her little sister. Yes, she regreted it terribly years later. But to some people it would have been unforgiveable. Yet Amycas must have forgiven his wife for the moment she acted without self control. Then Caroline went on to forgive him for his mistakes.

To act selfishly in the heat of the moment- Caroline and Amyas both had done so and maybe that's why Caroline could understand him better than anyone else.

DEATH ON THE NILE SPOILERS!!

I find it interesting that while Amyas and John Christow are much maligned, Simon Doyle escapes the critism. Yet he behaved more badly towards his wife Linnnet, than the other charaters. He only married her for money and cheated on her the whole time. Then he plotted for her demise and killed her. Yet Jackie and Simon were young, beautiful and tragic so it seems they get more sympathy!

go_leafs_nation 29 Oct 10 at 7:10 p.m. GMT

Oh, I personally don't like that type of behaviour in real life, but the characters in both books are far more complex than that.

knottyceltic 29 Oct 10 at 6:08 p.m. GMT

I agree Miss Quin, he shouldn't have died that way or died at all for his behavior but he's still the #1 pig.  I feel the same way of John Christow in the Hollow.  NO DOUBT in my mind that AC wrote these books/characters based on her own life experience.  Once you've experienced the insult and disrespect of infidelity on the part of your spouse it changes you.

No dis GoLeafsNation but I don't believe it *IS* "love" when a spouse is having intimate relations with other people while you are married.  No unfairness about it. 

MissQuin 29 Oct 10 at 2:41 p.m. GMT

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HUGE FIVE LITTLE PIGS SPOILERS:

My personal view is however badly Amyas behaved, he didn't deserve to die in that  horrific manner. To be paralysed and not be able to cry out, to see the woman you once had passion for, sit and watch you die? It's unthinkable.

It's a truly moving book. The plot does revolves around different types of love- the twisted kind, sisterly protective love, the love between Amayas and his wife.

Yes he did love her. He acted badly and if I was in his wife's shoes, I wouldn't have forgiven him. He made mistakes. But she loved him back and she died in prison loving him. When the murderer speaks about "she took him from me" it's what I find one of the most moving statements in Chrisite. There's so much behind it. Amyas and Caroline were untied in death and Elsa couldn't touch them there.

How many times have I heard "Chrisite wrote two dimensional carboard characters?" They should read Five little pigs and see for hemselves.

InspectorGrant 29 Oct 10 at 2:39 p.m. GMT

I wonder if Christow and Crale aren't both based on Archie Christie - Dame Agatha getting him out of her system a bit. 

Personally I love Five Little Pigs - I think that it is one of her best novels, the characters are great and the plotting, atmosphere and pacing are superb.  Definitely a nine out of ten.  I would give it a ten out of ten except that nothing's perfect..

go_leafs_nation 29 Oct 10 at 2:28 p.m. GMT

Now that's rather unfair. I personally agree with LoneWolf here. Crale was a silly man who did silly things in a fit of passion, but he genuinely loved his wife. He's a bit like Dr. Christow in The Hollow- people are also generally unfair to both characters.