Peril at End House
Encyclopedia
Peril at End House is a work of detective fiction
by Agatha Christie
first published in the US by the Dodd, Mead and Company
in February 1932
and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club
in March of the same year. The US edition retailed at $
2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence
(7/6).
The book features her famous character Hercule Poirot
, as well as Arthur Hastings
and Chief Inspector Japp
, and was the seventh book featuring Poirot.
Poirot instructs Nick to ask a distant relative to stay with her for the time being and protect her, so Nick asks her cousin Maggie to come. Poirot is now sure Nick is safe, but is mystified as to what motive there would be for killing Nick. Nick made a will six months previously in which she left the house to Charles Vyse and anything that remained to Freddie, but the amount would be so small that Poirot thinks it to be pointless to kill for it. That night, Nick holds a party with all of her closest friends in attendance, except Challenger who is delayed. The guests discuss whether the famous but currently missing pilot Michael Seton is really dead or not. At one point Nick leaves to take a phone call. When everyone is outside, Nick and Maggie go back into the house to fetch their coats. Poirot and Hastings later find the dead body of someone wearing Nick’s shawl. They immediately assume it is Nick, however they soon discover that Nick is fine, and that the dead person was Maggie. Maggie was wearing Nick’s shawl because she could not find her coat, so the murderer assumed she was Nick and shot her.
Nick breaks down over Maggie’s death, thinking it was her fault. Challenger soon arrives and is relieved to know the dead girl is not Nick. Poirot and Hastings interview Ellen who strangely was not watching the fireworks; she says she stayed behind to finish washing the dishes. Ellen also mentions a secret panel somewhere in the house, but does not know exactly where it is. Nick later says she has never heard of such a panel. Poirot is incredibly distraught that he could not save Maggie, and he vows he will not fail in finding the murderer. Poirot then sends Nick to a nursing home under the pretense of the shock, but really so she can be protected. No one is to see her, and she cannot eat any food sent from the outside. Poirot still has no idea why someone would want to kill Nick. The next day Poirot sees in the paper that the pilot Michael Seton is in fact dead, and realizes that that was what the telephone call was about. Nick confirms this and tells Poirot and Hastings that she was secretly engaged to Seton. Poirot thinks that even though this was a secret, someone close to Nick probably found out.
Poirot believes this to be important, because if Seton died then his fortune would go to Nick, and if Nick died it would go to Freddie. Thus Poirot considers Freddie an important suspect. He is also suspicious of Charles Vyse, because he may think he gets Nick’s money upon her death instead of Freddie. Poirot and Hastings search Nick’s house for the will. They find a few love letters from Seton, but not the will. Nick then remembers she sent it to Charles Vyse; however, when Poirot visits Vyse he says he never got the will. Poirot visits the Crofts next, because it was they who convinced Nick to make a will in the first place, when she was to get her appendix removed. Mr. Croft says that he sent the will to Vyse. Poirot reasons that either Vyse or Croft are lying, although he does not know why. Poirot does not believe the Crofts are connected to the murder, however he is still suspicious of them, mainly because they are just too nice. He asks his friend Chief Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard to check up on the Crofts. Another possible clue is a piece of paper the police found which is apparently part of a letter demanding money, although the author and recipient are unknown. When Freddie later sees this piece of paper she almost faints.
Poirot still believes the will to be very important, so he and Hastings travel to London to visit Michael Seton’s solicitor, who confirms Seton’s will leaves his vast fortune to Magdala Buckley. Upon returning to St Loo, Poirot finds there has been another attempt on Nick’s life, this time cocaine poisoning. Nick apparently ate a chocolate laced with cocaine. As she only ate one, Nick only became ill and was not killed. Further complicating matters is that the box of chocolate was supposedly sent by Poirot as it contained a card which he had sent with a bouquet of flowers. Poirot finds that Jim Lazarus dropped off the box; he tells them he did this on behalf of Freddie. Freddie says that Nick called her and asked for the chocolates, but her voice sounded a little different, so it might have been someone else. This puts even more suspicion on Freddie, because Poirot can easily tell that she is a cocaine addict, so she would have easy access to the supply.
Poirot is still baffled by the case, but things soon begin to fall into place when he reads a letter that Maggie wrote after arriving at End House. Hastings cannot see anything important in the letter, but it still sparks Poirot’s interest. Poirot soon makes a plan; he will put on an elaborate hoax that the murderer has succeeded and that Nick is dead. After a day of waiting for something to happen, Poirot gets a call from Charles Vyse, who tells him he has just received Nick’s lost will. Poirot debates what to do with this information. Hastings makes a half-serious comment that, should all else fail, they should attempt to hold a séance and speak with Maggie’s spirit. Poirot then suggests that he hold a séance of his own, since Nick is supposedly dead. One final thing helps Poirot solve the case; a conversation he and Hastings have on how some names have no shorter versions, and others have many.
Poirot invites all of the suspects to End House for the will to be read by Charles Vyse. Chief Inspector Japp also attends. The will says that Nick leaves all of her belongings to a very unlikely person: Mrs. Croft, who apparently helped Nick’s father in Australia. Everyone is surprised except the Crofts. But then the lights go out and Nick appears. Most assume she is a ghost, but Nick then explains how she is alive and how the will is a fake. Poirot explains the rest. The Crofts are professional forgers, as found out by Chief Inspector Japp. They had convinced Nick to make a will, and were intending to send to Charles Vyse a fake one should she die during her operation. Even though Nick did not die then, the Crofts kept the fake will and sent it in when they thought Nick had died for real. But, the Crofts did not murder Maggie. At that moment a shot is fired from the window and grazes Freddie’s shoulder. Poirot rushes to the window and brings inside a sickly looking man who soon dies. This is Freddie’s drug addicted husband. He was the one who wrote the letter demanding money. He had threatened to kill Freddie if she did not pay him, and had come to the meeting to do just that. Freddie supposes that, in her husband’s drug addicted state, he killed Maggie, thinking she was Freddie. However, Poirot says that the murderer was not Freddie’s husband, but someone else entirely: Nick Buckley. Nick confesses and is taken away by the police after asking for Freddie’s watch as a souvenir.
Poirot explains Nick’s plan to Hastings, Vyse, Challenger, Freddie, and Lazarus, after Ellen leaves and the Crofts are arrested. Nick was never engaged to Michael Seton. Maggie was; her first name was Magdala too. Nick was the only person who knew about the engagement, so she also knew how Seton’s will stated all his money would go to “Magdala Buckley”. With Michael missing and presumed deceased, Nick saw an opportunity to kill Maggie and pretend to be engaged to Seton, thus inheriting his money to fix up End House. Nick staged the attempts on her life herself, and then asked Maggie to join her at End House. When Poirot suggested Maggie come for protection, Nick simply asked her to come a day earlier. This is what Maggie mentioned in her letter that caught Poirot’s eye. Nick also sent the poison chocolates to herself to keep up the pretence (she simply disguised her voice a bit when talking to Freddie), as well as stealing some of Michael's letters to Maggie and planting them in her house - but only the ones in which he did not address her by name. Nick then killed Maggie at the party, making it look like another attempt on her life. Poirot admits that he was baffled by the case because he never suspected Nick; he was only able to figure it out once he assumed everything Nick said was a lie.
With the mystery of the murder solved, Poirot takes some time to answer a few remaining questions. The secret panel is real; in fact, Nick had hidden the pistol there and planted it on Freddie to incriminate her, which Japp witnessed. Ellen did not go to see the fireworks because she was suspicious that someone would be killed, although she thought it would be Nick. Challenger is in fact a drug dealer who had been supplying Freddie (although she is no longer taking it) and Nick with cocaine, which is how Nick poisoned the chocolate. Poirot instructs Challenger to flee the scene or face punishment, and Challenger promptly leaves. Finally, the watch Nick got from Freddie through Challenger contains a fatal dosage of cocaine, which Nick has no doubt already taken to escape the hangman’s noose. Poirot then leaves End House, happy to have solved the case, while Jim Lazarus and Freddie announce their intent to marry.
Isaac Anderson began his review in The New York Times Book Review
on March 6, 1932, by saying, "With Agatha Christie as the author and Hercule Poirot as the central figure, one is always assured of an entertaining story with a real mystery to it." He concluded, "The person who is responsible for the dirty work at End House is diabolically clever, but not quite clever enough to fool the little Belgian detective all the time. A good story with a most surprising finish."
Robert Barnard
: "A cunning use of simple tricks used over and over in Christie's career (be careful, for example, about names – diminutives and ambiguous male-female Christian names are always possibilities as reader deceivers). Some creaking in the machinery, and rather a lot of melodrama and improbabilities, prevent this from being one of the very best of the classic specimens."
in 1940 and opened in the West End of London
at the Vaudeville Theatre
on May 1. Poirot was played by Francis L. Sullivan
.
second series. Poirot was portrayed by David Suchet
and Nick Buckley by Polly Walker
. The film was overall quite faithful to the novel; however, Freddie's husband does not appear in the film, no shot is fired during the final meeting in which Poirot reveals all, Challenger is arrested rather than being allowed to flee, and it is never implied that Nick has already taken the fatal dose of cocaine, but that she eventually will.
, was adapted into a PC game by Flood Light Games, and published as a joint venture between Oberon Games and Big Fish Games
, with the player once again taking the role of Poirot as he searches End House and other areas in Cornwall Coast for clues and questions suspects based on information he finds, this time through the clue cards he gains on the way. http://www.gamezebo.com/reviews/agatha_christie_peril_at_end_h_2.html
as a graphic novel
adaptation in 2008, adapted by Thierry Jollet and illustrated by Didier Quella-Guyot (ISBN 0-00-728055-6).
The first true publication of the book was the US serialisation in the weekly Liberty
magazine in eleven instalments from June 13 (Volume 8, Number 24) to August 22, 1931, (Volume 8, Number 34). There were slight abridgements to the text, no chapter divisions and the reference in Chapter III to the character of Jim Lazarus as, "a Jew, of course, but a frightfully decent one" was deleted. The serialisation carried illustrations by W.D. Stevens.
In the UK, the novel was serialised in the weekly Women's Pictorial magazine in eleven instalments from October 10 (Volume 22, Number 561) to December 19, 1931, (Volume 22, Number 571) under the slightly different title of The Peril at End House. There were no chapter divisions and slight abridgements. All of the instalments carried illustrations by Fred W. Purvis.
"To Eden Phillpotts
. To whom I shall always be grateful for his friendship and the encouragement he gave me many years ago".
In 1908, Christie was recovering from influenza and bored and she started to write a story at the suggestion of her mother, Clara Miller (see the dedication to The Mysterious Affair at Styles
). This suggestion sparked Christie's interest in writing and several pieces were composed, some of which are now lost or remain unpublished (one exception to this is The Call of Wings which later appeared in The Hound of Death
in 1933). These early efforts were mostly short stories but at some point late in the year Christie attempted her first novel, Snow Upon the Desert. She sent it to several publishers but they all rejected the work. At Clara's suggestion she then asked Phillpotts to read and critique both the book and other examples of her writing for her. He was a neighbour and friend of the Miller family in Torquay
. He sent an undated reply back which included the praise that, "some of your work is capital. You have a great feeling for dialogue". In view of her later success in allowing readers to judge characters' feelings and motivations for themselves (and in doing so, thereby deceiving themselves as to the identity of the culprits), Phillpotts offered valuable suggestions to, "leave your characters alone, so that they can speak for themselves, instead of always rushing in to tell them what they ought to say, or to explain to the reader what they mean by what they are saying". He gave her further advice in the letter regarding a number of suggestions for further reading to help further improve her work.
Phillpotts gave Christie an introduction to his own literary agents, Hughies Massie, who rejected her work (although in the early 1920s, they did start to represent her). Undaunted, Christie attempted another story, now lost, called Being So Very Wilful and again asked Phillpotts for his views. He replied on February 9, 1909 with a great deal more advice and tips for reading. In her 1977 Autobiography
, Christie said, "I can hardly express the gratitude I feel to him. He could so easily have uttered a few careless words of well-justified criticism and possibly discouraged me for life. As it was, he set out to help".
on the inside flap of the dustjacket of the UK first edition (which is also repeated opposite the title page) reads:
Three near escapes from death in three days! Is it accident or design? And then a fourth mysterious incident happens, leaving no doubt that some sinister hand is striking at Miss Buckley, the charming young owner of the mysterious End House. The fourth attempt, unfortunately for the would-be murderer, is made in the garden of a Cornish Riviera hotel where Hercule Poirot, the famous Belgian detective, is staying. Poirot immediately investigates the case and relentlessly unravels a murder mystery that must rank as one of the most brilliant that Agatha Christie has yet written.
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
by Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
first published in the US by the Dodd, Mead and Company
Dodd, Mead and Company
Dodd, Mead and Company was one of the pioneer publishing houses of the United States, based in New York City. Under several names, the firm operated from 1839 until 1990. Its history properly began in 1870, with the retirement of its founder, Moses Woodruff Dodd. Control passed to his son Frank...
in February 1932
1932 in literature
The year 1932 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*E. V. Knox replaces Sir Owen Seaman as editor of Punch magazine.*Samuel Beckett's first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, is rejected by several publishers....
and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club
Collins Crime Club
The Collins Crime Club was an imprint of UK book publishers William Collins & Co Ltd and ran from May 6, 1930 to April 1994. Customers registered their name and address with the club and were sent a newsletter every three months which advised them of the latest books which had been or were to be...
in March of the same year. The US edition retailed at $
Dollar sign
The dollar or peso sign is a symbol primarily used to indicate the various peso and dollar units of currency around the world.- Origin :...
2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence
British sixpence coin
The sixpence, known colloquially as the tanner, or half-shilling, was a British pre-decimal coin, worth six pence, or 1/40th of a pound sterling....
(7/6).
The book features her famous character Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.Poirot has been portrayed on...
, as well as Arthur Hastings
Arthur Hastings
Captain Arthur Hastings, OBE, is a fictional character, the amateur sleuthing partner and best friend of Agatha Christie's Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot...
and Chief Inspector Japp
Chief Inspector Japp
Detective Chief Inspector James Japp is a fictional character who appears in several of Agatha Christie's novels featuring Hercule Poirot.-Japp in Christie's work:...
, and was the seventh book featuring Poirot.
Plot summary
Detective Hercule Poirot and Captain Arthur Hastings are spending a week's holiday at the Cornish resort of St. Loo, staying at the Majestic Hotel. They meet the young 'Nick' Buckley (her real first name being Magdala), who lives in End House, a slightly ramshackle house on a point in the bay. Nick casually mentions that she had three lucky escapes from death in as many days. Nick thinks nothing of this, but Poirot believes someone is out to kill her. This is confirmed when Poirot finds a bullet that Nick had thought to be a wasp shooting past her head. Poirot explains his concern to Nick, who does not believe him until the bullet is revealed to be from Nick’s gun, which has gone missing. Because the attacks on Nick’s life have been constant, Poirot does not believe it to be a random madman, but rather someone in Nick’s inner circle. Poirot begins to go through possible suspects. Nick’s nearest living relative is a lawyer cousin, Charles Vyse, who arranged the re-mortgaging on End House for her to supply desperately needed funds. Her housekeeper is named Ellen, and the lodge near End House is being leased by Mr. and Mrs. Croft, an Australian couple. Nick’s two closest friends are Freddie Rice, whom Nick is trying to persuade to divorce her abusive husband, and Jim Lazarus, an art dealer who is in love with Freddie. Finally there is George Challenger, who cares deeply for Nick and has considered proposing to her.Poirot instructs Nick to ask a distant relative to stay with her for the time being and protect her, so Nick asks her cousin Maggie to come. Poirot is now sure Nick is safe, but is mystified as to what motive there would be for killing Nick. Nick made a will six months previously in which she left the house to Charles Vyse and anything that remained to Freddie, but the amount would be so small that Poirot thinks it to be pointless to kill for it. That night, Nick holds a party with all of her closest friends in attendance, except Challenger who is delayed. The guests discuss whether the famous but currently missing pilot Michael Seton is really dead or not. At one point Nick leaves to take a phone call. When everyone is outside, Nick and Maggie go back into the house to fetch their coats. Poirot and Hastings later find the dead body of someone wearing Nick’s shawl. They immediately assume it is Nick, however they soon discover that Nick is fine, and that the dead person was Maggie. Maggie was wearing Nick’s shawl because she could not find her coat, so the murderer assumed she was Nick and shot her.
Nick breaks down over Maggie’s death, thinking it was her fault. Challenger soon arrives and is relieved to know the dead girl is not Nick. Poirot and Hastings interview Ellen who strangely was not watching the fireworks; she says she stayed behind to finish washing the dishes. Ellen also mentions a secret panel somewhere in the house, but does not know exactly where it is. Nick later says she has never heard of such a panel. Poirot is incredibly distraught that he could not save Maggie, and he vows he will not fail in finding the murderer. Poirot then sends Nick to a nursing home under the pretense of the shock, but really so she can be protected. No one is to see her, and she cannot eat any food sent from the outside. Poirot still has no idea why someone would want to kill Nick. The next day Poirot sees in the paper that the pilot Michael Seton is in fact dead, and realizes that that was what the telephone call was about. Nick confirms this and tells Poirot and Hastings that she was secretly engaged to Seton. Poirot thinks that even though this was a secret, someone close to Nick probably found out.
Poirot believes this to be important, because if Seton died then his fortune would go to Nick, and if Nick died it would go to Freddie. Thus Poirot considers Freddie an important suspect. He is also suspicious of Charles Vyse, because he may think he gets Nick’s money upon her death instead of Freddie. Poirot and Hastings search Nick’s house for the will. They find a few love letters from Seton, but not the will. Nick then remembers she sent it to Charles Vyse; however, when Poirot visits Vyse he says he never got the will. Poirot visits the Crofts next, because it was they who convinced Nick to make a will in the first place, when she was to get her appendix removed. Mr. Croft says that he sent the will to Vyse. Poirot reasons that either Vyse or Croft are lying, although he does not know why. Poirot does not believe the Crofts are connected to the murder, however he is still suspicious of them, mainly because they are just too nice. He asks his friend Chief Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard to check up on the Crofts. Another possible clue is a piece of paper the police found which is apparently part of a letter demanding money, although the author and recipient are unknown. When Freddie later sees this piece of paper she almost faints.
Poirot still believes the will to be very important, so he and Hastings travel to London to visit Michael Seton’s solicitor, who confirms Seton’s will leaves his vast fortune to Magdala Buckley. Upon returning to St Loo, Poirot finds there has been another attempt on Nick’s life, this time cocaine poisoning. Nick apparently ate a chocolate laced with cocaine. As she only ate one, Nick only became ill and was not killed. Further complicating matters is that the box of chocolate was supposedly sent by Poirot as it contained a card which he had sent with a bouquet of flowers. Poirot finds that Jim Lazarus dropped off the box; he tells them he did this on behalf of Freddie. Freddie says that Nick called her and asked for the chocolates, but her voice sounded a little different, so it might have been someone else. This puts even more suspicion on Freddie, because Poirot can easily tell that she is a cocaine addict, so she would have easy access to the supply.
Poirot is still baffled by the case, but things soon begin to fall into place when he reads a letter that Maggie wrote after arriving at End House. Hastings cannot see anything important in the letter, but it still sparks Poirot’s interest. Poirot soon makes a plan; he will put on an elaborate hoax that the murderer has succeeded and that Nick is dead. After a day of waiting for something to happen, Poirot gets a call from Charles Vyse, who tells him he has just received Nick’s lost will. Poirot debates what to do with this information. Hastings makes a half-serious comment that, should all else fail, they should attempt to hold a séance and speak with Maggie’s spirit. Poirot then suggests that he hold a séance of his own, since Nick is supposedly dead. One final thing helps Poirot solve the case; a conversation he and Hastings have on how some names have no shorter versions, and others have many.
Poirot invites all of the suspects to End House for the will to be read by Charles Vyse. Chief Inspector Japp also attends. The will says that Nick leaves all of her belongings to a very unlikely person: Mrs. Croft, who apparently helped Nick’s father in Australia. Everyone is surprised except the Crofts. But then the lights go out and Nick appears. Most assume she is a ghost, but Nick then explains how she is alive and how the will is a fake. Poirot explains the rest. The Crofts are professional forgers, as found out by Chief Inspector Japp. They had convinced Nick to make a will, and were intending to send to Charles Vyse a fake one should she die during her operation. Even though Nick did not die then, the Crofts kept the fake will and sent it in when they thought Nick had died for real. But, the Crofts did not murder Maggie. At that moment a shot is fired from the window and grazes Freddie’s shoulder. Poirot rushes to the window and brings inside a sickly looking man who soon dies. This is Freddie’s drug addicted husband. He was the one who wrote the letter demanding money. He had threatened to kill Freddie if she did not pay him, and had come to the meeting to do just that. Freddie supposes that, in her husband’s drug addicted state, he killed Maggie, thinking she was Freddie. However, Poirot says that the murderer was not Freddie’s husband, but someone else entirely: Nick Buckley. Nick confesses and is taken away by the police after asking for Freddie’s watch as a souvenir.
Poirot explains Nick’s plan to Hastings, Vyse, Challenger, Freddie, and Lazarus, after Ellen leaves and the Crofts are arrested. Nick was never engaged to Michael Seton. Maggie was; her first name was Magdala too. Nick was the only person who knew about the engagement, so she also knew how Seton’s will stated all his money would go to “Magdala Buckley”. With Michael missing and presumed deceased, Nick saw an opportunity to kill Maggie and pretend to be engaged to Seton, thus inheriting his money to fix up End House. Nick staged the attempts on her life herself, and then asked Maggie to join her at End House. When Poirot suggested Maggie come for protection, Nick simply asked her to come a day earlier. This is what Maggie mentioned in her letter that caught Poirot’s eye. Nick also sent the poison chocolates to herself to keep up the pretence (she simply disguised her voice a bit when talking to Freddie), as well as stealing some of Michael's letters to Maggie and planting them in her house - but only the ones in which he did not address her by name. Nick then killed Maggie at the party, making it look like another attempt on her life. Poirot admits that he was baffled by the case because he never suspected Nick; he was only able to figure it out once he assumed everything Nick said was a lie.
With the mystery of the murder solved, Poirot takes some time to answer a few remaining questions. The secret panel is real; in fact, Nick had hidden the pistol there and planted it on Freddie to incriminate her, which Japp witnessed. Ellen did not go to see the fireworks because she was suspicious that someone would be killed, although she thought it would be Nick. Challenger is in fact a drug dealer who had been supplying Freddie (although she is no longer taking it) and Nick with cocaine, which is how Nick poisoned the chocolate. Poirot instructs Challenger to flee the scene or face punishment, and Challenger promptly leaves. Finally, the watch Nick got from Freddie through Challenger contains a fatal dosage of cocaine, which Nick has no doubt already taken to escape the hangman’s noose. Poirot then leaves End House, happy to have solved the case, while Jim Lazarus and Freddie announce their intent to marry.
Literary significance and reception
The Times Literary Supplement on April 14, 1932, stated that the "actual solution is quite unusually ingenious, and well up to the standard of Mrs. Christie's best stories. Everything is perfectly fair, and it is possible to guess the solution of the puzzle fairly early in the book, though it is certainly not easy." The review further opined that, "This is certainly one of those detective stories which is pure puzzle, without any ornament or irrelevant interest in character. Poirot and his faithful Captain Hastings are characters whom one is glad to meet again, and they are the most lively in the book, but even they are little more than pawns in this problem. But the plot is arranged with almost mathematical neatness, and that is all that one wants."Isaac Anderson began his review in The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
on March 6, 1932, by saying, "With Agatha Christie as the author and Hercule Poirot as the central figure, one is always assured of an entertaining story with a real mystery to it." He concluded, "The person who is responsible for the dirty work at End House is diabolically clever, but not quite clever enough to fool the little Belgian detective all the time. A good story with a most surprising finish."
Robert Barnard
Robert Barnard
Robert Barnard is an English crime writer, critic and lecturer.- Life and work :Born in Essex, Barnard was educated at the Colchester Royal Grammar School and at Balliol College in Oxford....
: "A cunning use of simple tricks used over and over in Christie's career (be careful, for example, about names – diminutives and ambiguous male-female Christian names are always possibilities as reader deceivers). Some creaking in the machinery, and rather a lot of melodrama and improbabilities, prevent this from being one of the very best of the classic specimens."
1940 stage play
The story was adapted into a play by Arnold RidleyArnold Ridley
Major William Arnold Ridley, OBE was an English playwright and actor, first notable as the author of the play The Ghost Train and later in life for portraying the elderly Private Charles Godfrey in the popular British sitcom Dad's Army .-Early life:Ridley was born in Walcot, Bath, England where...
in 1940 and opened in the West End of London
West End of London
The West End of London is an area of central London, containing many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government buildings, and entertainment . Use of the term began in the early 19th century to describe fashionable areas to the west of Charing Cross...
at the Vaudeville Theatre
Vaudeville Theatre
The Vaudeville Theatre is a West End theatre on The Strand in the City of Westminster. As the name suggests, the theatre held mostly vaudeville shows and musical revues in its early days. It opened in 1870 and was rebuilt twice, although each new building retained elements of the previous...
on May 1. Poirot was played by Francis L. Sullivan
Francis L. Sullivan
Francis Loftus Sullivan was an English film and stage actor. He attended Stonyhurst, the Jesuit public school in Lancashire, England whose alumni include Charles Laughton and Arthur Conan Doyle.A heavily built man with a striking double-chin and a deep voice, Sullivan made his acting debut at the...
.
Agatha Christie's Poirot
An obscure Russian film version, entitled Zagadka Endkhauza, was made in 1989. The novel was also adapted for the small screen and made into a TV drama in 1990, as part of the Agatha Christie's PoirotAgatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot is a British television drama that has aired on ITV since 1989. It stars David Suchet as Agatha Christie's fictional detective Hercule Poirot. It was originally made by LWT and is now made by ITV Studios...
second series. Poirot was portrayed by David Suchet
David Suchet
David Suchet, CBE, is an English actor, known for his work on British television. He is recognised for his RTS- and BPG award-winning performance as Augustus Melmotte in the 2001 British TV mini-drama The Way We Live Now, alongside Matthew Macfadyen and Paloma Baeza, and a 1991 British Academy...
and Nick Buckley by Polly Walker
Polly Walker
Polly Walker is an English actress.- Early life :Walker was born in Warrington, Cheshire, England. Her first school was Silverdale Preparatory West Acton, London. At 16, Walker graduated from Ballet Rambert School in Twickenham, began her career as a dancer, but had to abandon dancing after a leg...
. The film was overall quite faithful to the novel; however, Freddie's husband does not appear in the film, no shot is fired during the final meeting in which Poirot reveals all, Challenger is arrested rather than being allowed to flee, and it is never implied that Nick has already taken the fatal dose of cocaine, but that she eventually will.
PC adaptation
On November 22, 2007, Peril at End House, like Death on the NileDeath on the Nile
Death on the Nile is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on November 1, 1937 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence and the US edition at $2.00.The book...
, was adapted into a PC game by Flood Light Games, and published as a joint venture between Oberon Games and Big Fish Games
Big Fish Games
Big Fish Games is a provider of Internet media delivery software and game services based in Seattle, Washington. The company was founded in 2002 by Paul Thelen , and currently employs more than 400 people...
, with the player once again taking the role of Poirot as he searches End House and other areas in Cornwall Coast for clues and questions suspects based on information he finds, this time through the clue cards he gains on the way. http://www.gamezebo.com/reviews/agatha_christie_peril_at_end_h_2.html
Graphic novel adaptation
Peril at End House was released by HarperCollinsHarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
as a graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
adaptation in 2008, adapted by Thierry Jollet and illustrated by Didier Quella-Guyot (ISBN 0-00-728055-6).
Publication history
- 1932, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), February 1932, Hardcover, 270 pp
- 1932, Collins Crime Club (London), March 1932, Hardcover, 256 pp
- 1938, Modern Age Books (New York), Hardcover, 177 pp
- 1942, Pocket BooksPocket BooksPocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books.- History :Pocket produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in America in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing industry...
(New York), Paperback, (Pocket number 167), 240 pp - 1948, Penguin BooksPenguin BooksPenguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
, Paperback, (Penguin number 688), 204 pp - 1961, Fontana Books (Imprint of HarperCollinsHarperCollinsHarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
), Paperback, 191 pp - 1978, Ulverscroft Large-print Edition, Hardcover, 327 pp, ISBN 0-70-890153-0
- 2007, Facsimile edition (Facsimile of 1932 UK first edition), April 2, 2007, Hardcover, 256 pp ISBN 0-00-723439-2
The first true publication of the book was the US serialisation in the weekly Liberty
Liberty (1924-1950)
Liberty was a weekly, general-interest magazine, originally priced at five cents and subtitled, "A Weekly for Everybody." It was launched in 1924 by McCormick-Patterson, the publisher until 1931, when it was taken over by Bernarr Macfadden until 1942. At one time it was said to be "the second...
magazine in eleven instalments from June 13 (Volume 8, Number 24) to August 22, 1931, (Volume 8, Number 34). There were slight abridgements to the text, no chapter divisions and the reference in Chapter III to the character of Jim Lazarus as, "a Jew, of course, but a frightfully decent one" was deleted. The serialisation carried illustrations by W.D. Stevens.
In the UK, the novel was serialised in the weekly Women's Pictorial magazine in eleven instalments from October 10 (Volume 22, Number 561) to December 19, 1931, (Volume 22, Number 571) under the slightly different title of The Peril at End House. There were no chapter divisions and slight abridgements. All of the instalments carried illustrations by Fred W. Purvis.
Book dedication
The dedication of the book reads:"To Eden Phillpotts
Eden Phillpotts
Eden Phillpotts was an English author, poet and dramatist. He was born in India, educated in Plymouth, Devon, and worked as an insurance officer for 10 years before studying for the stage and eventually becoming a writer....
. To whom I shall always be grateful for his friendship and the encouragement he gave me many years ago".
In 1908, Christie was recovering from influenza and bored and she started to write a story at the suggestion of her mother, Clara Miller (see the dedication to The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a detective novel by Agatha Christie. It was written in 1916 and was first published by John Lane in the United States in October 1920 and in the United Kingdom by The Bodley Head on January 21, 1921. The U.S...
). This suggestion sparked Christie's interest in writing and several pieces were composed, some of which are now lost or remain unpublished (one exception to this is The Call of Wings which later appeared in The Hound of Death
The Hound of Death
The Hound of Death and Other Stories is a collection of twelve short stories by Agatha Christie first published in the United Kingdom in October 1933...
in 1933). These early efforts were mostly short stories but at some point late in the year Christie attempted her first novel, Snow Upon the Desert. She sent it to several publishers but they all rejected the work. At Clara's suggestion she then asked Phillpotts to read and critique both the book and other examples of her writing for her. He was a neighbour and friend of the Miller family in Torquay
Torquay
Torquay is a town in the unitary authority area of Torbay and ceremonial county of Devon, England. It lies south of Exeter along the A380 on the north of Torbay, north-east of Plymouth and adjoins the neighbouring town of Paignton on the west of the bay. Torquay’s population of 63,998 during the...
. He sent an undated reply back which included the praise that, "some of your work is capital. You have a great feeling for dialogue". In view of her later success in allowing readers to judge characters' feelings and motivations for themselves (and in doing so, thereby deceiving themselves as to the identity of the culprits), Phillpotts offered valuable suggestions to, "leave your characters alone, so that they can speak for themselves, instead of always rushing in to tell them what they ought to say, or to explain to the reader what they mean by what they are saying". He gave her further advice in the letter regarding a number of suggestions for further reading to help further improve her work.
Phillpotts gave Christie an introduction to his own literary agents, Hughies Massie, who rejected her work (although in the early 1920s, they did start to represent her). Undaunted, Christie attempted another story, now lost, called Being So Very Wilful and again asked Phillpotts for his views. He replied on February 9, 1909 with a great deal more advice and tips for reading. In her 1977 Autobiography
Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
An Autobiography is the title of the recollections of crime writer Agatha Christie published posthumously by Collins in the UK and by Dodd, Mead & Company in the US in November 1977, almost two years after the writer’s death in January 1976. The UK edition retailed at £7.95 and the US edition at...
, Christie said, "I can hardly express the gratitude I feel to him. He could so easily have uttered a few careless words of well-justified criticism and possibly discouraged me for life. As it was, he set out to help".
Dustjacket blurb
The blurbBlurb
A blurb is a short summary or some words of praise accompanying a creative work, usually used on books without giving away any details, that is usually referring to the words on the back of the book jacket but also commonly seen on DVD and video cases, web portals, and news websites.- History :The...
on the inside flap of the dustjacket of the UK first edition (which is also repeated opposite the title page) reads:
Three near escapes from death in three days! Is it accident or design? And then a fourth mysterious incident happens, leaving no doubt that some sinister hand is striking at Miss Buckley, the charming young owner of the mysterious End House. The fourth attempt, unfortunately for the would-be murderer, is made in the garden of a Cornish Riviera hotel where Hercule Poirot, the famous Belgian detective, is staying. Poirot immediately investigates the case and relentlessly unravels a murder mystery that must rank as one of the most brilliant that Agatha Christie has yet written.
International titles
- Czech: Dům na úskalí (House of the pitfalls)
- Dutch: Moord onder vuurwerk (Murder under Fireworks)
- Finnish: Vaarallinen talo (The dangerous house)
- French: La Maison du péril (The house of peril)
- German: Das Haus an der Düne (The house near the dune)
- Hungarian: A vörös sál (The Red Shawl), Ház a világ végén (House at the End of the World), Ház a sziklán (House on the Rock)
- Italian: Il pericolo senza nome (The Unnamed Danger)
- Russian: Загадка Эндхауза (=Zagadka Endkhauza, The Mystery of End House)
- Spanish: Peligro Inminente (Impending Danger)
- Swedish: Badortsmysteriet (The Resort Mystery)
- Indonesian: Hotel Majestic (Majestic Hotel)
External links
- Peril at End House at the official Agatha Christie website