UK Four and Twenty Blackbirds
A man eats the same food, on the same days, at the same restaurant every week. When his habits change, Poirot investigates. From The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and Three Blind Mice and Other Stories.
More about this story
Having been printed in a US magazine in 1926 titled Poirot and the Regular Customer, the story didn’t appear in a UK publication, The Strand Magazine, until 1941. It was in 1960 that it was included in a book collection, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and in the US in the collection Three Blind Mice and Other Stories in 1950.
It was adapted for TV starring David Suchet in the first season of Agatha Christie’s Poirot in 1989, and included the characters of Hastings (Hugh Fraser), Japp (Philip Jackson), and Miss Lemon (Pauline Moran). In 2004 it was adapted for the Japanese anime series Agatha Christie no Meitantei Poirot to Marple, in which Poirot teams up with Miss Marple’s great niece to solve crimes.
