In Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks, John Curran hails Five Little Pigs as the greatest of her ‘murder in the past’ plots. He suggests that it is her most impressive combination of detective and ‘straight’ novel. I agree, though I’d add that some of the books in which she focuses essentially on a creating a complex mystery are even more brilliant. But Five Little Pigs is an impressive book, with more effective characterisation than in much of her work.
Christie often found inspiration for her plots in nursery rhymes, and the ‘five little pigs’ rhyme is there at the beginning – but Curran points out that before the detail of the story took shape, ‘she had considered a different murder method, a different murderer and different suspects.’
Not until she had indulged in a good deal of trial and error did Christie come up with the scenario she eventually chose. And what a chilling scenario it is – with the culprit watching the victim die. It’s much more horrifying, to my mind, than most of the graphic torture scenes so commonly found in modern books about serial killings. I would have assumed it was Christie’s starting point for the story, but far from it.
Writers like me can learn a lot from seeing how Christie played around with ideas, trying them out for size, discarding many plot twists that had superficial appeal in favour of alternatives that worked more effectively in the particular context. It’s a reminder that writing involves endless revision – and not just once one has completed the first draft.
I don’t work in the same way as Christie, but I empathise with many of her methods. When writing The Serpent Pool, I struggled over one aspect of the story for a long time. At a late stage, a way forward occurred to me. I am fairly confident that when people read the book, that late twist will seem fundamental to the whole story. As soon as it struck me, it felt ‘right’. But I confess – it did take an awfully long time to strike me!