Vera Rossakoff
The Countess Vera Rossakoff is a literary character from Agatha Christie .
She is the eternal adversary of the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and his helper Arthur Hastings . Hercule Poirot falls in love with the former jewel thief and later double agent , who in the course of his cases takes the side of Poirot's greatest enemies, although she herself feels sympathy for the detective.
In a novel - The Big Four (1927) - and two short stories - Ein Indiz zuviel (1923) and The Capture of Cerberus (1947) - around Poirot, she plays a main or important supporting role.
In The Capture of Cerberus , Miss Lemon, valued by Poirot, points out to her own astonishment that Poirot must have sent Vera Rossakoff red roses . For a man of his age this would be undue. But at this point, Christie deliberately lets her character Miss Lemon err, since Poirot, like his related characters Arthur Conan Doyles Holmes or Ernest Bramah's Max Carrados, is far from romantic feelings and Rossakoff is more devoted to fascination. What Irene Adler is to Sherlock Holmes , Rossakoff seems to be to Poirot.
She is mentioned in two other novels:
Poirot's memory of the Countess in The Secret of Buckle Shoes was not included in the German translation, it can only be found in the original:
“They were chic, these little London girls. They wore their tawdry clothes with an air. Their figures, however, he considered, lamentably deficient. Where were the rich curves, the voluptuous lines that had formerly delighted the eye of an admirer? He, Hercule Poirot, remembered women ... One woman, in particular - what a sumptuous creature - a Bird of Paradise - a Venus ... What woman was there among these pretty chits nowadays, who could hold a candle to Countess Vera Rossakoff ? A genuine Russian aristocrat, an aristocrat to her fingertips! And also, he remembered, a most accomplished thief One of those natural geniuses ... With a sigh, Poirot wrenched his thoughts away from the flamboyant creature of his dreams. "
In The Kleptomaniac , Agatha Christie writes:
“Then he (Poirot) thought for a moment of Countess Vera Rossakoff. How charming, how exotic she had remained even in old age! These girls today ... I probably only feel that because I'm getting old, he told himself. Even this good, boring girl may be Venus in the eyes of another man. But he doubted it "
While Hastings deeply detests her, Poirot admires her as well and he can always save her from jail despite her criminal machinations .
After they haven't met for 20 years, Poirot runs into her again in connection with a nightclub involved in illegal drug deals, as she is the owner of the suspicious establishment. She also has a son who is believed dead but is later found by Poirot. This son becomes engaged to a drug dealer.
Whether she really witnessed the October Revolution as a Russian aristocrat and whether she really is who she claims to be remains unclear, as this is repeatedly doubted by various people. Poirot is extremely naive about her person - contrary to his usual behavior - and seems to believe or want to believe all of her stories.
Her character is portrayed in only one film adaptation of Poirot: in 1991 in the film adaptation of the short story The Double Clue based on A clue too much from Poirot's first cases in the television series Agatha Christie's Poirot by Kika Markham .
In the TV adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express from 2001 , the role of Princess Natalia Dragomiroff is incorrectly referred to as Vera Rossakoff.
Individual evidence
- ^ Hugh Greene: The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: Early Detective Stories. (1970; Penguin 1971): Introduction. Aubrey Wilson: The Search for Ernest Bramah . Creighton and Read 2007.
- ↑ Four Max Carrado's Detective Stories. on: gutenberg.org
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Agatha Christie: One, Two, Buckle My Shoe Poirot. Facsimile Edition, HarperCollins, 2008, ISBN 0-00-727457-2 . (Facsimile of 1940 UK First Edition)
- ↑ Agatha Christie: The Kleptomaniac. 12th edition. Scherzverlag, 1979, ISBN 3-502-50660-4 , p. 46.
- ↑ role of Vera Rossakoff in the imdb