Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Agatha Christie’s “Five Little Pigs” does not make into my Top 10 Hercule Poirot mysteries, although I’m still rating it here on Goodreads with 4 stars. Why? Because, for me, it’s still a classic Christie and Poirot doesn’t disappoint — he’s brilliant and I adore his sleuthing style even when he’s solving a murder in retrospect. “Murder in Retrospect” actually is the original title and personally, I prefer it. I think it fits better, despite the fact that Christie uses the children’s rhyme about the “little pigs” (…this one went to market, etc) throughout the book.

Poirot is taxed with the job of solving a murder mystery for a death that happened sixteen years ago. A famous painter was poisoned by his wife, who apparently was jealous of her husband’s infidelity. She was convicted of the crime, sent to prison, and eventually died there, but not before penning a letter to her only daughter professing her innocence. Now the daughter, a grown woman who was just child at the time of her father’s murder, wants to know the truth. Did her mother kill her father as the court declared or was her mother truly innocent? It’s up to Hercule Poirot to uncover the truth.

I did find this particular story to move a bit slow, primarily because it’s told in retrospect from the point of view of the different suspects. While it’s interesting to hear Poirot’s interviews with each and then read the letters detailing their movements on the day of the murder, this story does not have the same sort of pace of books like “Death on the Nile” or “Murder on the Orient Express” where we are thrown in to the action with Poirot while he’s tracking clues and employing his “little grey cells”.

For any Agatha Christie fan, I do recommend “Five Little Pigs”. The mystery is good, she delivers her signature red herrings and Poirot is a delight as always. However, I did feel that the story began to drag a bit in the middle, bogged down as she delivered the perspectives of each suspect. Overall, I liked it and most likely will read it again at a later date.

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