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They are a vicious international quartet of criminals known as "The Big Four". Number One was a brilliant Chinese, the greatest criminal brain of all time; Number Two was a USAmerican multi-millionaire; Number Three was a beautiful Frenchwoman scientist; and Number Four was "the destroyer," the ruthless murderer with a genius for disguise, whose business it was to remove those who interfered with his masters plans. These four, working together, is a partnership with one simple goal, establish world dominance with murders.
Belgian detective Hercule Poirot was preparing for a voyage to South America when an uninvited guest, coated from head to foot in mud, stood at his doorway, collapsed, then recovered long enough to scribble the number four on a piece of paper. Now, "The Big Four" pursues eliminate the only man who can foil them: Hercule Poirot. It's up to Poirot and his faithful assistant Hastings to follow the clues and stop the deadly cabal from achieving its devastating end. But do they really avoid the Grim Reaper? In the most dangerous case of his career, the little detective will not be diverted by poison, a falling tree, electrocution, or a hit-and-run. Poirot appears to meet his end when a bomb explodes in his apartment. Hastings, devastated, vows to avenge him--but can he succeed without Poirot?
About the Author
Agatha Christie
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devon, in the United Kingdom, the daughter of a wealthy American stockbroker. Her father died when she was eleven years old. Her mother taught her at home, encouraging her to write at a very young age. At the age of 16, she went to Mrs. Dryden's finishing school in Paris to study singing and piano. In 1914, at age 24, she married Colonel Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. While he went away to war, she worked as a nurse and wrote her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), which wasn't published until four years later. When her husband came back from the war, they had a daughter. In 1928 she divorced her husband, who had been having an affair. In 1930, she married Sir Max Mallowan, an archaeologist and a Catholic. She was happy in the early years of her second marriage, and did not divorce her husband despite his many affairs. She travelled with her husband's job, and set several of her novels set in the Middle East. Most of her other novels were set in a fictionalized Devon, where she was born.
Agatha Christie is credited with developing the "cozy style" of mystery, which became popular in, and ultimately defined, the Golden Age of fiction in England in the 1920s and '30s, an age of which she is considered to have been Queen. In all, she wrote over 66 novels, numerous short stories and screenplays, and a series of romantic novels using the pen name Mary Westmacott. She was the single most popular mystery writer of all time. In 1971 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
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