The Big Four

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The Big Four  (1927 (reprint 1985)) 
by Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie

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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.

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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

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The Big Four

AGATHA CHRISTIE

COLLINS 8 GRAFTON STREET LONDON W1

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First published 1927

This reprint 1985


ISBN 0 00 231058 9

Made and Printed in Great Britain By

William Collins Sons & Co Ltd, Glasgow

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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 before January 1, 1928.

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.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse

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