The A.B.C. Murders (1936)
Blurb:
My review:
One of Christie's triumphs: an original plot, a masterpiece of telling the truth and making it lie, and a successful application of Anthony Berkeley's favourite gambit (similarities to The Silk Stocking Murders and to Chesterton's "The Sign of the Broken Sword" are obvious—comparisons, however, are not only obvious but odious). Poirot is in magnificent form; with the (limited) assistance of Captain Hastings and the victims' relations, and spurred on by rivalry with the obnoxious Inspector Crome, he investigates a series of seemingly random murders across England and in various social milieux (working-class Andover, middle-class Bexhill-on-Sea, the gentry of Churston), linked only by the presence of the A.B.C. Guide and of the sinister Mr. Cust. The grisly series comes to its close in the melting-pot of Doncaster. Perplexed, however, by the psychological anomaly embodied in Cust, and by his possession of a cast-iron alibi for one of the crimes, Poirot reasons from psychological clues to produce a profile of the murderer, which he proves with physical clues.