Lord Edgware Dies (Poirot)

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Take it from me, nothing is as "riveting" as Hercules Poirot hanging about letting the little grey cells percolate.

Russian: Смерть лорда Эджвера (=Smert' lorda Ejvera, Lord Edgware's Death), Смерть лорда Эдвера (=Smert' lorda Edvera, Lord Edware's Death) Jane Wilkinson wants to kill her husband and comes up with a ruse that will give her an apparently unshakable alibi. She gets Carlotta Adams to impersonate her at a dinner party while she commits the murder. I've read Lord Edgware dies more than 10years ago and I only remembered that I really liked it and I had only a feeling about what happens in the end. The book was adapted by Carnival Films as a one-hundred-and-twenty minute drama and transmitted on ITV in the UK on Saturday, 19 February 2000 as a special episode in their series Agatha Christie's Poirot. This version is extremely faithful to the novel, only deviating by including series regular Miss Felicity Lemon, who was not in the original mystery.

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Jane Wilkinson a beautiful actress is married to Lord Edgware. One evening at a hotel, she walks over to Poirot and Hastings in the middle of dinner, to have a private conversation. She tells Poirot that she is in love with a Duke and wants to divorce her husband and if he doesn't oblige, she might have to kill him (half joking, I guess)! She wants Poirot to meet Lord Edgware and convince him to grant her divorce. Reluctantly Poirot complies to this strange request. Lord Edgware Dies" presents a puzzle that challenge the little grey cells of Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie's most famous and popular detective, and this film adaptation (from PBS''Poirot' series) is surprisingly faithful to the novel (down to the murderer's final thought), and much better than the CBS television movie with Peter Ustinov and Faye Dunaway. The novel was well received at publication, in both London and New York, noting the clue that came from the chance remark of a stranger, calling it ingenious. A later review called it clever and unusual.

There is an outrageous twist in the story and I did not think it works. The director also embellishes the twist by cheating the audience in how one scene has been presented. In 1930, Christie married archaeologist Max Mallowan (Sir Max from 1968) after joining him in an archaeological dig. Their marriage was especially happy in the early years and remained so until Christie's death in 1976. Dowager Duchess of Merton - The Duke's mother, vehemently opposed to his planned marriage to Jane Wilkinson.Poirot Facsimile Edition (Facsimile of 1933 UK first edition), 5 February 2007, Hardcover, 256 pp; ISBN 0-00-724022-8 Prominent in the story are Jane Wilkinson, who like many actresses depicted in fiction, seems completely self-obsessed, and described by her friends as having no conscience at all. But despite reports of having been seen in Lord Edgware’s house at the time of the murder, she has a perfect alibi, as she was also seen attending a dinner with a dozen other guests. We also meet Carlotta Adams, an American impersonator, who is on tour in London and Paris. In a performance watched by Poirot and Hastings in chapter 1, she mimics Jane Wilkinson exceptionally well. Interestingly, this performance is viewed with pleasure by Jane Wilkinson herself, who is seated in the audience, just behind Poirot and Hastings. Despite these disagreements, Thompson often asked Agatha how the book was progressing. In fact the Thompson couple were uniquely honoured, because Agatha Christie read the manuscript of the book aloud to them, and this was something that she only ever usually did for her family. Agatha Christie and Reginald Campbell Thompson clearly regained their mutual respect, because not only did she dedicate the novel to the Thompson couple, but a skeleton found on the dig was named “Lord Edgware”!

Wilkinson is arrested and writes to Poirot from prison about wishing an audience for her hanging, surprisingly evincing no anger at being foiled by him - nor any remorse. Agatha Christie also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, and was occasionally published under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan. The Secret of Chimneys - The Seven Dials Mystery - Cards on the Table - Murder is Easy - Towards Zero

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The narrator is as ever, Captain Arthur Hastings, who describes what he thinks of as his friend’s limitations in an affectionate way: Lord Edgware Dies is a 1934 British mystery film directed by Henry Edwards and starring Austin Trevor, Jane Carr, and Richard Cooper. The film was based on the 1933 Agatha Christie novel Lord Edgware Dies. For much of the novel we watch the interaction between these three. The relationship between Poirot and Hastings is far better described than in the previous novel, “Peril at End House” in which the duo seemed to spend all their time carping at one another. The author Robert Barnard has noticed this too, calling the novel: You have the confidence — always the confidence! You never stop and say to yourself — can it be so? You never doubt — or wonder. You never think: this is too easy!’ It is not long before they all find a crime to investigate. Jane Wilkinson is beautiful actress who is married to the obnoxious Lord Edgware. She had engaged Poirot to talk to her husband and get him to agree to a divorce. Lord Edgware tells Poirot that he had agreed to a divorce several weeks earlier and confirmed it in a letter which Jane Wilkinson states she never received.