Five little pigs by Agatha Christie

I've always known this book under its very different italian title, which translates "the portrait of Elsa Greer". I love it, and I think it's extraordinary, and in talking about it I can't avoid major spoilers from the start: just a little warning in case someone is actually reading this. What's extraordinary about it is that I actually remembered the ending, I knew before starting to read it who did it and who didn't, and it was still a pleasant and interesting read. It wasn't like "the mirror crack'd from side to side"; in that book, once I spotted the murderer, everything else became boring, but not this time because it is very different. "Five little pigs" talks of a murder that happened 16 years before, and a girl asks Poirot to investigate to find out if her mother was really guilty or not. It's a very different kind of investigation, which consists in listening at what people remember about it and then draw his own conclusions. Despite my bad memory I could not forget who really did it, probably because it was right there in the italian title. Once I read it many years ago, I could not forget that she did it, that she was posing for her portrait after having poisoned him, slowly watching him die. Still I enjoyed the book very much, and it wasn't so clear to me how and why. The only obvious thing was why the woman charged and condemned for the murder did not attempt to defend herself, without ever confessing. Logicly there are two way one could go: confess or defend oneself. She did neither of them, why? Because she was protecting someone and that could only be the most important person in her life. That was the only clear thing to me. If I had not known the identity of the real murderer though, I would have never suspected of the teenage girl: her sister did, obviously, but I would have more easily suspected one of the two men; either Philip or Meredith looked to me like possible suspects. It was very interesting to see how Poirot puts all the little pieces together, at the end. All he has is what we have; he just puts every little piece into its right place, giving to every apparently innocent word its real meaning. I think it was a great book!
Amyas Crale was not killed by his wife Caroline: both her sister Adrienne and her daughter Mary were right. And Elsa's last words were so strong: how she sat watching him die, not realising she was killing herself. She could never feel alive after that. She could not hurt Caroline, who was actually happy thinking she was saving her beloved sister. Elsa could not hurt anyone, she could not reach them anymore. She felt like the one that really died that day.

ITA il ritratto di Elsa Greer