The A.B.C. Murders

The A.B.C. Murders
Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition
Author(s)	Agatha Christie
Translator	Greg Messer
Cover artist	Not known
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Crime novel
Publisher	Collins Crime Club
Publication date	January 6, 1936
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	256 pp (first edition, hardcover)
ISBN	NA
Preceded by	Death in the Clouds
Followed by	Murder in Mesopotamia

The A.B.C. Murders is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on January 6, 1936 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company on February 14 of the same year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00.

The book features the characters of Hercule Poirot, Arthur Hastings and Chief Inspector Japp. The form of the novel is unusual, combining first and third-person narrative. Christie had previously experimented with this approach (famously pioneered by Charles Dickens in Bleak House), in her novel The Man in the Brown Suit. What is unusual in The A.B.C. Murders is that the third-person narrative is supposedly reconstructed by the first-person narrator, Hastings. This approach shows Christie's commitment to experimenting with point of view, famously exemplified by The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Summary

A serial killer calling himself ABC sends typewritten letters to Poirot giving information about the murders he is about to commit, putting police and Poirot on a chase. ABC also leaves a calling card at the crime scene - ABC railway guides depicting the place of the crime. Poirot investigates this crime with Hastings and Japp, his old friends. ABC commits four murders in alphabetical order, posing a serious challenge for Poirot. In a seemingly unrelated story, a travelling stocking salesman named Alexander Bonaparte Cust seems to be behaving suspiciously. Cust fought in World War I, where he suffered a head wound. The injury causes headaches and memory blackouts. Cust is an epileptic too. He has visited every crime scene on the day the murders happened. He appears to be the elusive ABC.

Characters in surname alphabetical order

1. ABC - An unknown cold blooded serial killer and Poirot's nemesis in this novel. He kills his victims in alphabetical order and leaves an ABC railway guide depicting the scene of crime as his calling card.
2. Alice Ascher - ABC's first victim, an old woman running a tobacco shop in Andover. A divorced woman with no children.
3. Franz Ascher - Alice's alcoholic husband and a prime suspect of Alice's murder. He is more terrified of her and may not be the killer.
4. Elizabeth "Betty" Barnard - ABC's second victim, a young, flirtatious part-time waitress in Bexhill.
5. Megan Barnard - Betty's elder, sensible and comparatively down to earth sister. She disapproves of Betty's ways but wishes well for her and Donald. It is implied that she has feelings for Donald.
6. Milly Bigley - A co-worker of Betty. Milly is a girl and a plain looking one at that, two things that make her an eyesore in Betty's eyes.
7. Sir Carmichael Clarke - ABC's third victim, a rich old man in Churston. Sir Carmichael is a childless man married to a cancer stricken wife.
8. Lady Charlotte Clarke - The widow of Carmichael. She is herself dying due to cancer and kept on various drugs. Her condition has made her delusional and irritated. However, she provides a vital clue to Poirot about the case.
9. Franklin Clarke - Carmichael's younger brother and immediate successor.
10. Inspector Crome - An Inspector assigned Betty's murder case. He has a low opinion of Poirot.
11. Alexander Bonaparte Cust - A travelling salesman with a pompous name. He sells stockings for a living and is an epileptic. He fought in the war, where he received a blow on head, making him prone to blackouts and severe headaches. His path continuously crosses with ABC's.
12. Roger Emmanuel Downs - A schoolteacher present at the cinema in Doncaster. Although he was clearly the logical victim, ABC killed George instead. He sat only two seats away from George and realised that George was murdered.
13. Mary Drower - The niece of Alice. She works in a rich household and has Alice as her only relative.
14. George Earlsfield - ABC's fourth victim at a cinema in Doncaster. He was a barber, mistakenly killed by ABC.
15. Donald Fraser - Betty's would be fiancee. He is a temperamental person and the prime suspect for Betty's murder.
16. Thora Grey - Carmichael's young assistant. She regards him as a father figure. It is implied that she has feelings for Franklin.
17. Michael Hartigan - An old friend of Cust and an acquaintance of his landlady.
18. Captain Arthur Hastings - Poirot's old friend and companion on the case. An impatient man, whose lack of imagination is often playfully ridiculed by Poirot.
19. Detective Chief Inspector James Japp - Another old friend of Hercule Poirot, who is assigned the case.
20. Lily Marbury - The secretary of Cust's landlady.
21. Hercule Poirot - A renowned Belgian detective famous for solving cases using his "little grey cells".
22. Doctor Thompson - He tries to make a psychological profile of ABC.

Plot

The novel chronicles the case from Hastings point of view, after which the events in life of Cust are described. Poirot is aided by his old friends Hastings and Japp, along with Inspector Crome, Dr. Thompson and a legion of relatives of the deceased. ABC's next kill will be in Doncaster, where the St Leger is to be run on the day foretold. Lady Clarke gives Poirot an important clue: she saw a shabbily dressed salesman talking with Thora. Based on Thora's testimony, stockings found in Alice's home and facts given by others connected to the case, Poirot turns up in Doncaster. He tells his associates to scour every possible area. However, ABC has successfully killed George in a cinema hall in Doncaster and melted away.

Cust is present in the hall, but has suffered from a blackout. On returning to his hotel, he is surprised to find a knife in his pocket and blood on his sleeve. Realising the implications, he prepares to escape. He lies to his landlady and Lily that he was in Cheltenham and claims to be going on another trip. However, Michael, a friend of Cust, has seen him in Doncaster. When Michael tells this to Lily, the duo get suspicious and tip off Crome. Crome jumps into action, but Cust manages to escape unnoticed. However, he soon surrenders himself and confesses to the crimes. A thorough search of his apartment confirms suspicions when a large bunch of ABC railway guides are found. However, Cust has his own story to tell.

He claims that he was hired by a reputable hosiery firm to sell the stockings. He went to the crime scenes as directed by the firm, but he never recalled committing any murder. His typewriter was a gift from the firm. His story falls flat when the firm denies his allegations and his typewriter is found to be used to type the ABC letters as well as his own appointment letter. Cust claims that he thought the guide packets were extra stockings, which he was supposed to open when his supply was extinguished. He is nevertheless confident of being a murderer and is arrested. However, Poirot finds it fishy when he learns that Cust doesn't remember typing letters to him. Besides, Cust has a solid alibi for Betty's murder. After being pensive for days (and paying a backhanded compliment to Hastings), Poirot calls a meeting of all the parties involved.

Poirot begins by discussing the anomalies. The death of Alice, which could have gone unnoticed, was deliberately publicised by ABC. He sent the letters to Poirot instead of Scotland Yard or a newspaper. This indicated that ABC is a prefectly sane man, trying to hide a single murder as part of a series. He points out that Cust could never have killed Betty: he had neither the brains, nor would Betty court a man like him. So, ABC was in fact somebody else, trying to frame Cust all along. Donald and Franz didn't have brains to pull it off. Besides, Donald's motive was a poor one: jealousy. Poirot also mentions that ABC misspelled his address on the Churston letter, something abnormal for him. At this, Hastings exclaims that the letter was meant to go astray. Poirot points out that this seemingly simple and obvious explanation which was dismissed earlier, was ironically the truth. There were two reasons why Poirot was chosen as the recipient: 1] He was a foreigner 2] A letter sent to him would go astray, unlike one sent to police. Poirot now points out that Franklin is the real murderer, whose motive was money. He explains that Carmichael would likely have married young Thora after becoming a widower. Thora was young enough to beget children, which would rob Franklin of an inheritance. One day, Franklin met Cust in a bar and learnt of his pompous name. From which Franklin thought out ABC.

In a pre-planned way, he disguised himself as the stocking firm and hired Cust. He carried out the murders, all the while seeing to it that Cust would implicate himself. After Carmichael, he killed George to throw the scent off him. Franklin laughs off the "theory", but Poirot confronts him with proofs. After Poirot mentions that Franklin's fingerprint was found on one of the keys of Cust's typewriter, Franklin tries to commit suicide. However, Poirot has already surmised this and emptied his revolver. Based on this, Franklin is arrested. Poirot matches up Donald and Megan.

In the epilogue, Cust is released and offered a hefty sum to publish the story. Poirot gives him some advice to increase his profits on this, besides hinting that Cust really needs new glasses if he wants to get rid of the headaches. Hastings is stunned to learn that Poirot bluffed about the "fingerprint on the typewriter", and Poirot joyfully comments that they should go on a hunting trip, just as Hastings intended to do earlier in the novel.

Literary significance and reception

The Times Literary Supplement of January 11, 1936 concluded with a note of admiration for the plot that, "If Mrs. Christie ever deserts fiction for crime, she will be very dangerous: no one but Poirot will catch her."

Isaac Anderson in The New York Times Book Review of February 16, 1936 finished his review by stating, "This story is a baffler of the first water, written in Agatha Christie's best manner. It seems to us the very best things she has done, not even excepting Roger Ackroyd.

In The Observer's issue of January 5, 1936, "Torquemada" (Edward Powys Mathers) said, "Ingenuity...is a mild term for Mrs. Christie's gift. In The A.B.C. Murders, rightly chosen by the [crime] club as its book of the month, she has quite altered her method of attack upon the reader, and yet the truth behind this fantastic series of killings is as fairly elusive as any previous truth which Poirot has had to capture for us. The reader adopts two quite different mental attitudes as he reads. At first, and for a great many pages, he is asking himself: "Is Agatha Christie going to let me down? Does she think she can give us this kind of tale as a detective story and get away with it?" Then the conviction comes to him that he has been wronging the authoress, and that he alone is beginning to see through her artifice. In the last chapter he finds, because brilliant circus work with a troop of red horses and one dark herring has diverted his attention from a calm consideration of motive, he has not been wronging, but merely wrong. It is noticeable, by the way, that characters break off at intervals to tell us that we have to do with "a homicidal murderer." We are ready to take this for granted until Mrs. Christie (I wouldn't put it past her) gives us one who isn't."

E. R. Punshon reviewed the novel in the February 6, 1936 issue of The Guardian when he said, "Some readers are drawn to the detective novel by the sheer interest of watching and perhaps anticipating the logical development of a given theme, others take their pleasure in following the swift succession of events in an exciting story, and yet others find themselves chiefly interested in the psychological reactions caused by crime impinging upon the routine of ordinary life. Skilful and happy is that author who can weave into a unity this triple thread. In Mrs. Agatha Christie's new book…the task is attempted with success." He went on to say, "In the second chapter, Mrs. Christie shows us what seems to be the maniac himself. But the wise reader, remembering other tales of Mrs. Christie's, will murmur to himself 'I trust her not; odds on she is fooling me,' and so will continue to a climax it is not 'odds on' but a dead cert he will not have guessed. To an easy and attractive style and an adequate if not very profound sense of character Mrs. Christie adds an extreme and astonishing ingenuity, nor does it very greatly matter that it is quite impossible to accept the groundwork of her tale or to suppose that any stalking-horse would behave so invariably so exactly as required. As at Bexhill, a hitch would always occur. In the smooth and apparently effortless perfection with which she achieves her ends Mrs. Christie reminds one of Noel Coward; she might, indeed, in that respect be called the Noel Coward of the detective novel."

An unnamed reviewer in the Daily Mirror of January 16, 1936 said, "I'm thanking heaven I've got a name that begins with a letter near the end of the alphabet! That's just in case some imitative soul uses this book as a text book for some nice little series of murders." They summed up, "It's Agatha Christie at her best."

Robert Barnard: "A classic, still fresh story, beautifully worked out. It differs from the usual pattern in that we seem to be involved in a chase: the series of murders appears to be the work of a maniac. In fact the solution reasserts the classic pattern of a closed circle of suspects, with a logical, well-motivated murder plan. The English detective story cannot embrace the irrational, it seems. A total success – but thank God she didn't try taking it through to Z."

References to other works

In chapter one Poirot alludes to a situation in the 1935 novel, Three Act Tragedy. Similarly, in the same chapter, Poirot mentions his failed attempt of retirement to grow vegetable marrows as depicted in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

In chapter three of the novel, Poirot lays out the plot of what he considers a perfect crime, a crime so challenging that 'even he' would find it hard to solve. This exact murder — where someone is murdered by one of four people playing bridge in the same room with him — is the subject of Christie's Cards on the Table, which was published later in the same year.

In chapter nineteen, Poirot reflects over his first case on England, where he "brought together two people who loved one another by the simple method of having one of them arrested for murder." This is a reference to the novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and the lovers mentioned are John and Mary Cavendish.

References in other works

The plot of The ABC Murders is mentioned by Detective Inspector John Appleby in Michael Innes′ novel Appleby′s End (1945), and in the first story in volume 39 of the manga Detective Conan (chapters 393-397), which was inspired by the novel.

Film, TV and other adaptations

The first adaptation of the novel was the 1965 film The Alphabet Murders with Tony Randall as Hercule Poirot.

Agatha Christie's Poirot

The novel was adapted in 1992 for the television series Agatha Christie's Poirot with David Suchet playing the role of Hercule Poirot. The adaptation remains faithful to the novel, with some minor changes and characters omitted. In the end the murderer tries to escape while in the novel, he tries to commit suicide. The cast included:

• Hugh Fraser as Captain Hastings
• Philip Jackson as Chief Inspector Japp
• Donald Sumpter as Alexander Bonaparte Cust
• Donald Douglas as Franklin Clarke
• Nicholas Farrell as Donald Fraser
• Pippa Guard as Megan Barnard

Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple

A four-part episode of the anime Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple is based on the book.

Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders video game

Main article: Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders

In 2009, Dreamcatcher Interactive released a video game version of the novel for the Nintendo DS. The game has players control Captain Hastings and must solve the mystery by inspecting crime scenes and questioning suspects. In order to appeal to players familiar with the original story, the game also offers the option to play with a different murderer, which results in different clues and testimony throughout the entire game. The game received mediocre reviews, but was commended for its faithful recreation of the source material.

Publication history

• 1936, Collins Crime Club (London), January 6, 1936, Hardcover, 256 pp
• 1936, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), February 14, 1936, Hardcover, 306 pp
• 1941, Pocket Books (New York), Paperback, (Pocket number 88)
• 1948, Penguin Books, Paperback, (Penguin number 683), 224 pp
• 1958, Pan Books, Paperback (Great Pan 95), 191 pp
• 1962, Fontana Books (Imprint of HarperCollins), Paperback, 192 pp
• 1976, Greenway edition of collected works (William Collins), Hardcover, 251 pp, ISBN 0-00-231014-7
• 1978, Greenway edition of collected works (Dodd Mead), Hardcover, 251 pp
• 1979, Pan Books, Paperback, 191 pp
• 1980, Collins Crime Club (London), Golden Jubilee of Crime Club with introduction by Julian Symons, Hardcover, 224 pp, ISBN 0-00-231323-5
• 1980, Ulverscroft Large-print edition, Hardback, ISBN 0-70-890590-0
• 2006, Poirot Facsimile Edition (Facsimile of 1936 UK First Edition), HarperCollins, September 4, 2006, Hardcover ISBN 0-00-723443-0

The first true publication of The A.B.C. Murders occurred in the US with an abridged version appearing in the November 1935 (Volume XCIX, Number 5) issue of Cosmopolitan magazine with illustrations by Frederic Mizen.

The UK serialisation was in sixteen parts in the Daily Express from Monday, November 28 to Thursday December 12, 1935. All of the instalments carried an illustration by Steven Spurrier. This version did not contain any chapter divisions and totally omitted the foreword as well as chapters twenty-six, thirty-two and thirty-five. In addition most of chapters seven and twenty were missing. Along with other abridgements throughout the novel, this serialisation omitted almost forty percent of the text that appeared in the published novel.

International titles

• Dutch: ABC-Mysterie (ABC-Mystery)
• French: A.B.C. contre Poirot (A.B.C. versus Poirot)
• German: Die Morde des Herrn ABC (The murders of Mr. ABC)
• Hungarian: Poirot és az ABC (Poirot and the Alphabet), Az ABC-gyilkosságok (The A.B.C. Murders)
• Italian: La serie infernale (The Hellish Series)
• Russian: Убийство по алфавиту (=Ubiystvo po alfavitu, The Alphabet Murder), Убийства по алфавиту (=Ubiystva po alfavitu, The Alphabet Murders)
• Spanish: El Misterio de la Guía de Ferrocarriles (The Railway Guide Mystery)
• Romanian: Ucigaşul ABC (The ABC Killer)

External links

• The ABC Murders at the official Agatha Christie website
• The Alphabet Murders (1965) at the Internet Movie Database
• The ABC Murders (1992) at the Internet Movie Database