His targets all have initials that match, as with the first victim, Alice Ascher. taunts him and challenges him to stop him before he kills in towns starting with the letter A. (In significant departures, this version omits one longtime confederate and kills off another early.)īut he does have a lethal pen pal. It’s 1933 and Poirot is elderly and alone. It strongly suggests that Phelps does not understand Poirot. To Poirot purists, this will be like booking a ride on the Orient Express and then watching as it jumps the tracks and careens down a snowy hilltop. A subplot about the put-upon sister of one victim is quite poignant.īut writer Sarah Phelps, who has previously adapted such Christie works as “The Witness for the Prosecution” and “Ordeal by Innocence,” has the audacity to do something Christie never did in all her decades of writing Poirot’s exploits: give him a tragic backstory to explain his determination to thwart evil. Everyone wants to put their own stamp on a story. What’s the excuse of those behind the latest adaptation of one of Christie’s most famous novels?Īmazon Prime’s three-part, three-hour miniseries “The ABC Murders” (streaming Friday), with Academy Award nominee John Malkovich as Christie’s beloved Belgium detective Hercule Poirot, adds characters, subtracts others, elevates a minor player into a major antagonist and even tosses in a thrilling chase sequence.Īll those things are to be expected in an adaptation of a well-known work.

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