REVIEW: Hickory Dickory Dock

 Hickory Dickory Dock
Author: Agatha Christie

Once again, this Agatha Christie novel was published in the US and the UK under different titles. It published in the UK as Hickory Dickory Dock and in the US as Hickory Dickory Death. This is the first appearance of Miss Lemon, Hercule Poirot's secretary, in one of the Poirot novels. Previously, Miss Lemon had only appeared in some of the short stories. 

My paperback copy of this book [Pocket Books, 1975, 222 pages] was in terrible shape. The spine was brittle and many pages were falling out. It was in such bad shape that it was unreadable. Every time I tried more pages dropped out. The paper was very brittle as well. So, I took photos and threw the book away. The cover art and bright orange coloring was bizarre. Gotta love those 1970s covers! 

I listened to an audio book version of this novel instead. [Blackstone Publishing, 2010, 6 hrs 3 minutes, narrated by Hugh Fraser] Hugh Fraser always does a magnificent job narrating the Hercule Poirot audio books! Once again, I thoroughly enjoyed his performance! 

The basics: Hercule Poirot notices his secretary, Miss Lemon, is upset and gets drawn into a case involving thefts at a student hostel run by Miss Lemon's sister, Mrs. Hubbard.  It soon turns into something much more serious than petty theft.  

Adaptations: 

Television: The long-running show Agatha Christie's Poirot had an episode based on this book in 1995

(Season 6, episode 2).  Lots of changes are made to the plot and time line. This isn't one of my favorite Poirot episodes. I always enjoy David Suchet as the detective, but this time the changes in the plot ruined the episode for me. 

Television: The French television series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie made an episode based on this novel. As usual, pretty drastic changes are made including setting the story in France and replacing Poirot with French detectives. This series is fun to watch, even if it makes some pretty big changes. If your local library has Kanopy, you can watch the entire series there. Enjoy!  

I was a bit surprised that BBC Radio didn't do an audio drama presentation based on this book! I will just have to wait until I've read the next book (Dead Man's Folly) to enjoy one of their audio dramas again. They did 27 audio dramas based on the Hercule Poirot novels, so skipped six of the books. I researched online to find out why they didn't do them all. Best explanation I found was -- funding cuts.

Moving on to the next!!  19 books to go! I'm getting closer!!