Murder by the Book
                      
Director: Lawrence Gordon Clark
Year: 1986
Rating: 7.0
A rather fanciful and clever one-hour TV show that is great fun for Poirot fans. During her life Agatha Christie had a love-hate relationship with her detective. He was in her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920. Over the next fifty years she was to write 32 more Poirot novels and about 50 short stories. But at times she grew very cross with her own character - calling him "insufferable" at one time and an "egocentric creep" at another. She created other detectives to get away from him, but her publisher always wanted another Poirot. I very much like Miss Marple as a character - more than the "creep" - but nearly all her great books excluding And Then There were None were with Poirot. In 1940 she kills him off in The Curtain. In it, Poirot is an old man in a wheelchair solving his last case with Hastings at his side. But it wasn't published until right before her death in 1976. It had been written as bombs fell on London - her neighbor's homes were demolished - and she wanted to give her heirs something and to end Poirot with his death.

 

That is where this film comes in. Her publishers are visiting her home to convince her to publish the book - some time I would guess in the 1960s.  She finally agrees to do so and goes to read her manuscript and falls asleep. She wakes when she hears sounds outside and opens the door only to find her dog biting a middle-aged man with an upturned moustache and an egg-shaped head. It is Poirot. Who explains to her that he has come to stop a murder. His own. By her. It turns into a cat and mouse game in which she tries to poison him and he becomes indignant that she dares to kill the Greatest Detective ever.

 

She explains to him that she wanted him to die so that no other author would continue the character as with that Bond fellow. Of course, Poirot was finally continued with the three books so far of Sophie Hannah. They are quite good though not Christie good. Lots of little bits in the film that only Christie fans will get. For example, he is infuriated that two of his books were given to Miss Marple - the senile spinster as he calls her - those were two of the Margaret Rutherford films - based on Poirot stories. Two great actors portray them - Ian Holm makes a fine Poirot and Peggy Ashcroft is wonderful as Christie. It is a pretty crappy quality copy I found on YouTube but this was a miniature joy.