Hercule Poirot

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Hercule Poirot is a fictional character by the British writer Agatha Christie (1890–1976), a Belgian private detective who is very convinced of himself and his abilities . His belletristic drafted biography makes him as a retired police officer during the First World War into a refugee exile to Britain go.

resume

Hercule Poirot, as a well-known detective, first appears in The Mysterious Affair at Styles ( The missing link in the chain ) . He has his last case in Curtain ( Curtain ) . Both novels are set in the same country house style. As a running gag , Poirot is often mistaken for a French by those around him, which causes the Belgian to constantly make corrections. He is extremely proud of his mustache and of his "little gray cells" that enable him to solve his cases. Poirot has an exaggerated sense of order, his clothes are always so flawless "as if a single grain of sand could cause him more pain than a cannonball".

His small, dandy-like appearance, which rounds off an egg head, is often described as "ridiculous" or "funny figure" and now and then leads to the fact that he is not taken seriously by strangers and sometimes mistaken for a hairdresser. However, this gives him more of a psychological advantage. He is the English language consciously in this sense, how often in the early novels - such as in Murder in Mesopotamia ( Murder in Mesopotamia ) from the comments of the nurse Amy Leatheran - becomes clear. His pronounced egocentricity (“Poirot knows what he's doing!”) Often drives the stiff British Scotland Yard chief inspector James “Jimmy” Japp, with whom he first worked together in the Abercrombie counterfeiting scandal in 1904, to despair - yet Poirot does everything to him Sometimes invaluable service in solving his cases, for which the police officer is always grateful in the end.

In some Hercule Poirot novels, the master detective has a loyal and loyal, if somewhat dodgy, adlatus , Captain Arthur Hastings , at his side, who is also the first-person narrator of some stories. In some stories, Poirot's tender romance with the Russian petty criminal Vera Rossakoff , who poses as a countess who fled to England during the Russian Revolution, is revealed . Otherwise, the Belgian detective usually keeps a clear head towards the ladies. In the short crime collection The First and Last Works of Hercules and the novel The Big Four , Hercule Poirot's brother, Achille Poirot, who also has a first name from Greek mythology, is mentioned as the only relative. However, according to Hercule Poirot in The Big Four , this brother comes from the “land of myth”, so it does not exist.

Literary trick

One of the fundamental problems of detective novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries was the social class of the investigator. Police employees typically came from the lower social classes and in class-conscious Great Britain it was unrealistic until after the end of World War II that a member of this class would or could uninhibitedly investigate the upper class. At the same time, however, in particular crime novels with a plot met with a particular interest in reading among members of the upper classes. The American author Anna Katharine Green introduced a solution to this problem for the first time with her detective novel That Affair Next Door (published 1897) by providing the investigating police officer with an amateur detective who belonged to this shift. Martha Halley Dubose points out that Agatha Christie found another elegant and original solution in the protagonist Hercule Poirot. Because of his origins, he is an outsider for whom the British class barriers do not apply.

The novels and collections of short stories

Agatha Christie wrote 33 novels with Hercule Poirot. Listed here together with the collections of short stories published as books after their publication.

Poirot's cases in chronological order

Poirot's police years in Belgium

Beginning of the private detective career

These four stories take place shortly after Poirot fled to England (1917–1918).

The 1920s (1920 to 1929)

Poirot settles in London and opens an office as a private detective.
These are the years of short stories (26 short stories and only four novels).

The 1930s (1930 to 1940)

These are the years of novels (14 novels, 22 short stories and one play). Twelve short stories come from the book The Labor of Hercules . The other stories listed here are also set in this period, but were published before or later. The play is titled Black Coffee and was written by Agatha Christie because she was very dissatisfied with the way her novels were translated for the theater. More than twenty years after the author's death, the play was rewritten into a novel by Charles Osborne .

During and after the Second World War

During this period, a new crime heroine - Miss Marple - takes the stage, and Hercule Poirot's adventures become rarer.

In 36 years, Agatha Christie wrote 14 novels and two short stories. The short stories were only revised and expanded versions of earlier short stories.

Poirot's last case

  • Curtain , Hercule Poirot's Last Fall (published 1975).

Awards

In 2000, Christie's Hercule Poirot series received the US Anthony Award for best crime and mystery series of the century as part of the millennium celebrations and stood up against the nominated Ed McBain (87th Police Station), Marcia Muller (Sharon McCone series), Dorothy L. Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey series) and Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe series) through.

Film adaptations

Six cases of Hercule Poirot were filmed for the cinema. In 1974 Albert Finney starred in the film version of Murder on the Orient Express in the role of Poirot. For his performance, Finney was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor . Tony Randall had previously appeared as Poirot in The Murders of Lord ABC (1965). The detective was also portrayed by Sir Peter Ustinov , first in the film adaptation of Death on the Nile (1978) and in Evil Under the Sun (1982). Ustinov later played Poirot in three television films: Mord à la Carte (1985), Fatal Parties and Murder with Divided Roles (both 1986). Ustinov's last Poirot film, Rendezvous with a Corpse , was shot in 1988. However, his portrayal was increasingly oriented towards his own personality rather than Christie's fictional character.

Between 1989 and 2013, David Suchet Poirot was largely true to type in the seventy-part English television series Agatha Christie's Poirot . The last season was filmed between 2012 and 2013 and broadcast between June and November 2013 on British television. Suchet also played the role of Inspector Japp in the aforementioned television film Murder à la Carte , in which Peter Ustinov played Poirot.

Two of the four Miss Marple films with the English actress Margaret Rutherford , namely The Wax Bouquet (1963) and Four Women and a Murder (1964), are based on the novels of the same name The Wax Bouquet and Four Women and a Murder . The cases actually solved by Hercule Poirot were rewritten for Miss Marple by the scriptwriters .

2001 Mord im Orient-Express ( The Murder on the Orient Express ) was produced as a television film for US television, in which Alfred Molina played the lead role of Hercule Poirot. In 2004, NHK , a Japanese television station, produced a 39-part anime series entitled Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple ( Agasa Kurisutī no Meitantei Powaro to Māpuru ). The series, which covers some of the best-known Poirot and Miss Marple stories, ran from July 4, 2004 to May 12, 2005 and is now being repeated on NHK and other television networks in Japan. The Poirot figure was spoken therein by Kōtarō Satomi, Miss Marple by Kaoru Yachigusa.

Another adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express is the 2017 film adaptation , directed by Kenneth Branagh , who also played Hercule Poirot. Other roles include Johnny Depp and Penélope Cruz .

ABC's Murders was remade in 2018 with John Malkovich in the lead role. In this film adaptation - in contrast to the others - a gloomy mood dominates, Hercule Poirot does not appear as a quirky-looking super-brain, but as a broken character.

Radio plays

In 1958, NDR edited the novel Alibi as a radio play with Josef Offenbach (Poirot) and Charles Regnier .

In 2006, the SWR / MDR released a series of radio plays as part of the “Krimisommer” series with Felix von Manteuffel in the title role. Eight stories were set to music:

  • 1. A door slams
  • 2. Twenty-four blackbirds
  • 3. The dream
  • 4. The treacherous garden
  • 5. Holidays in Rhodes
  • 6. Let flowers speak
  • 7. Dead on the third floor
  • 8. Poirot and the kidnapper

Theater adaptations

For several years now, the Berlin reading theater "Radio plays to watch" has been dealing with Poirot stories. In 2001, free scenic adaptations of The Eye of God and The Tragedy of Marsdon Manor were performed; In March 2005, The Jewel Robbery in the Grand Hotel and The Adventure of the King of the Cross were on the program. The "radio plays to watch" interpret the Poirot stories as crime comedies, often with a penchant for entertaining crime clothes.

Discography - film music

  • Poirot at the movies - with “Murder on the Orient Express” by Richard Rodney Bennett and “Death on the Nile” by Nino Rota - Cloud Nine CNS 5007
  • Murder on the Orient Express by Richard Rodney Bennett - DRG Records 19039
  • Evil Under the Sun by Cole Porter - DRG 12615
  • Mystery Movie Scores - with the music from "Appointment with Death" by Pino Donaggio - Silva Screen SIL 5054-2 (edel company)
  • Poirot - with music by Christopher Gunning from the TV episodes with David Suchet - Virgin Records VTCD 8

comics

In 2004, at the same time as the series start of Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple , a manga series appeared in Japan under the same title. A total of 39 issues were published.

New novels

The English author Sophie Hannah has been continuing the series of novels since 2014 . So far, three novels written by her have appeared:

  • The Monogram Murders (English The Monogram Murders, 2014)
  • The open coffin (English Closed Casket, 2016)
  • The secret of the four letters (english The Mystery of Three Quarters, 2018)

literature

  • Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery - The Lives and Works of Notable Women Crime Novelists . Thomas Dunne Books, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-312-27655-3 .
  • Anne Hart : Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot: His life and adventures . Scherz-Verlag, 1996, ISBN 3-502-51472-0
  • Georg Seeßlen : Agatha Christie in the film in ders .: Murder in the cinema. History and mythology of the detective film . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1981, ISBN 3-499-17396-4
  • Judith Kretzschmar, Sebastian Stoppe, Susanne Vollberg (ed.): Hercule Poirot meets Miss Marple. Agatha Christie intermedial . Büchner, Darmstadt 2016, ISBN 978-3-941310-48-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Agatha Christie: The missing link in the chain. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-596-18214-5 . Second edition 2011, page 107ff.
  2. ↑ See Earl F. Bargainnier: The gentle art of murder: the detective fiction of Agatha Christie . Bowling Green University Popular Press, Bowling Green 1980, pp. 53f.
  3. ↑ a b Martha Hailey Dubose: Women of Mystery , p. 9.
  4. ↑ Agatha Christie's Poirot: Elephants Can Remember (trailer). In: itv.com. June 4, 2013, accessed August 25, 2013 .
  5. ↑ See Murder on the Orient Express (2017). In: Internet Movie Database . Retrieved September 16, 2017.
  6. ↑ The mastermind and hatred. Stuttgarter Zeitung, May 9, 2019.
Works by Agatha Christie


Novels with
Hercule Poirot

The Missing Link in the Chain  (1920) • Murder on the Golf Course  (1923) • Alibi  (1926) • The Big Four  (1927) • The Blue Express  (1928) • The House on the Dune  (1932) • Thirteen at Table  ( 1933) • Murder on the Orient Express  (1934) • Nicotine  (1935) • Death in the clouds  (1935) • The murders of Mr ABC  (1936) • Murder in Mesopotamia  (1936) • With open cards  (1936) • Death on the Nile  (1937) • The dog playing the ball  (1937) • Death awaits  (1938) • Hercule Poirot's Christmas  (1938) • Morphine  (1940) • The secret of the buckled shoes  (1940) • Evil under the sun  (1941) • The Unfinished Portrait  (1942) • The Owl House  (1946) • The Death Whirlwind  (1948) • Four Women and a Murder  (1951) • The Wax Bouquet  (1953) • The Kleptomaniac  (1955) • Reunion with Mrs. Oliver  (1956) • The Cat in the Dovecote  (1959) • On a Double Track  (1963) • The Forgetful Murderess  (1966) • The Snow White Party  (1969) • Elephants Don't Forget  (1972) • Curtain  (1975)

Novels with
the Beresfords

A Dangerous Adversary  (1922) • Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf  (1941) • Lots of charming old ladies  (1968) • Age does not protect against ingenuity  (1973)

Novels with
Miss Marple

Murder in the Rectory  (1930) • The Dead in the Library  (1942) • The Shadow Hand  (1943) • A Murder Is Announced  (1950) • Fata Morgana  (1952) • The Secret of the Gold Mine  (1953) • 4:50 p.m. from Paddington  ( 1957) • Murder in the Mirror  (1962) • Caribbean Affair  (1964) • Bertrams Hotel  (1965) • Fate in Person  (1971) • Rough Rest  (1976)

Novels with
fellow investigators

The Man in the Brown Suit  (1924) • The Count's Memoirs  (1925) • The Last Joker  (1929) • The Secret of Sittaford  (1931) • A Step into the Void  (1934) • The Dying in Wychwood  (1939) • And then There was no more  (1939) • Shortly before midnight  (1944) • Avenging ghosts  (1944) • Hydrocyanic acid  (1945) • The crooked house  (1949) • They came to Baghdad  (1951) • The uncanny way  (1954) • Fatal error  ( 1958) • The pale horse  (1961) • Murder made to measure  (1967) • Passenger to Frankfurt  (1970)

Anthologies

Poirot accounts  (1924) • Pandora's Box  (1929) • The Strange Mister Quin  (1930) • The Tuesday Night Club  (1932) • The Dog of Death  (1933) • Something's Lazy  (1934) • Parker Pyne Investigates  ( 1934) • Hercule Poirot Never Sleeps  (1937) • The Labor of Hercules  (1947) • A Diplomatic Incident  (1960) • Poirot's First Cases  (1974) • Miss Marple's Last Cases  (1979) • The Murderous Tea Round  (1991) • As long as it bright is  (1997)