"There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c'est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy!"
Hercule Poirot, Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha
Christie
It is Christmas Eve. The Lee family reunion is
shattered by a deafening crash of furniture, followed by a high-pitched wailing
scream. Upstairs, the tyrannical Simeon Lee lies dead in a pool of blood, his
throat slashed. But when Hercule Poirot, who is staying in the village with a
friend for Christmas, offers to assist, he finds an atmosphere not of mourning
but of mutual suspicion. It seems everyone had their own reason to hate the old
man.
The opening epigraph is taken from Macbeth “Yet who
would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?” and sets the scene
for the story to come: tyrannical patriarch Simeon Lee is murdered on Christmas
Eve and suspicion falls on his dysfunctional family. A classic Christie with a country
manor, family resentment, and secrets behind locked doors.
The novel was first published in 1938, and didn't
appear in the US until 1939, under the revised title Murder for Christmas (the
title used for the magazine version in 1938), which was changed again to A
Holiday for Murder in 1947.
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