The Big Four

The Big Four (1985)
by Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie

THE BIG FOUR

The incomparable Hercule Poirot and his bluff but somewhat impulsive friend Hastings find themselves unexpectedly drawn into a ghoulish whirlpool of terror and brutality. The Big Four, the toughest and best organised crime syndicate of all time aims to reduce the world to a state of anarchy in order to satisfy their voracious lust for power by becoming universal dictators. Their Chinese leader is already the Eminence Grise behind the Communist world, the second in command is an American multi-millionaire, the third is a brilliant Frenchwoman and the fourth is the anonymous killer who ruthlessly destroys those who combat the Four. In spite of the seeming omnipresence of the organisation and a grim succession of murders, Poirot calmly unravels a jumbled mass of evidence which leads to a tense climax in a cave in the Dolomites.

4148078The Big Four1985Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie

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A SELECTION BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Appointment with Death
The Body in the Library
By the Pricking of My Thumbs
Cat Among the Pigeons
The Clocks
Curtain: Poirot's Last Case
Dead Man's Folly
Death Comes as the End
Death on the Nile
Dumb Witness
Endless Night
Evil Under the Sun
Five Little Pigs
4.50 From Paddington
Hallowe'en Party
The Hollow
Murder on the Orient Express
Nemesis
One Two Buckle My Shoe
Ordeal by Innocence
Partners in Crime
Passenger to Frankfurt
Poirot's Early Cases
The Postern of Fate
Sad Cypress
Sparkling Cyanide
Sleeping Murder
Three Act Tragedy
Etc., etc.

The Greenway Collected Edition
ABC Murders
At Bertram's Hotel
Cards on the Table
A Caribbean Mystery
Crooked House
Destination Unknown
Death in the Clouds
Elephants Can Remember
Hercule Poirot's Christmas
The Labours of Hercules
Lord Edgware Dies
The Moving Finger
Murder at the Vicarage
A Murder is announced
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Mystery of the Blue Train
N or M?
Ten Little Niggers
They Came to Baghdad
They Do It with Mirrors
Towards Zero
Three Act Tragedy
The Thirteen Problems
Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

Biography
Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

The Big Four

AGATHA CHRISTIE

COLLINS 8 GRAFTON STREET LONDON W1

First published 1927

This reprint 1985

ISBN 0 00 231058 9

Made and Printed in Great Britain By

William Collins Sons & Co Ltd, Glasgow

Contents
page
I.	The Unexpected Guest	1
II.	The Man from the Asylum	15
III.	We Hear More About Li Chang Yen	23
IV.	The Importance of a Leg of Mutton	39
V.	Disappearance of a Scientist	51
VI.	The Woman on the Stairs	62
VII.	The Radium Thieves	75
VIII.	In the House of the Enemy	94
IX.	The Yellow Jasmine Mystery	113
X.	We Investigate at Croftlands	124
XI.	A Chess Problem	137
XII.	The Baited Trap	161
XIII.	The Mouse Walks In	174
XIV.	The Peroxide Blonde	187
XV.	The Terrible Catastrophe	209
XVI.	The Dying Chinaman	230
XVII.	Number Four Wins a Trick	250
XVIII.	In the Felsenlabyrynth	266

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in 1927, before the cutoff of January 1, 1929.

The longest-living author of this work died in 1976, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 47 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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