Revision #89922

The Big Four is a detective novel first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons on 27 January 1927, and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. It features Hercule Poirot, Arthur Hastings, and Inspector (later, Chief Inspector) Japp.

The Big Four is a detective novel first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons on 27 January 1927, and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. It features Hercule Poirot, Arthur Hastings, and Inspector (later, Chief Inspector) Japp. The structure of the book is different from that of most Christie novels in that The Big Four is a series of short cases involving the Big Four villains rather than the investigation of a single crime. The novel is derived from a series of linked short stories that first appeared in The Sketch magazine in 1924 under the sub-heading of The Man who was No. 4, then amalgamated into one narrative.