How many murders?

Has anybody conducted an authoritative "body count"? How many total homicides?

Comments

  • Tommy_A_JonesTommy_A_Jones Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
    About the time the last series was on the TV or Radio Times but the statistics
  • GKCfanGKCfan Wisconsin, United States
    Remember, it's hard to get a definitive body count because there are so many referred-to murders (like in Mrs. McGinty's Dead when they find four women who could be Evelyn Hope) that are not directly connected to the current plot, but they count as murders by some standards.  Do you count the dead people the main characters killed in And Then There Were None?
  • Tommy_A_JonesTommy_A_Jones Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
    I think it is only fair when doing a body count add the ones who died from start to finish of the book so Miss whatever her name is in Murder Is Easy but not the ones who died in the Village before her and only the ones on the Island in And Then There Were None not the people the Islanders Killed.
  • GKCfanGKCfan Wisconsin, United States
    But by that system, Five Little Pigs and Elephants Can Remember would have no murders.  A lot of Christie's books are "murder in retrospect" investigations.
  • Tommy_A_JonesTommy_A_Jones Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
    I hadn't thought of that
  • GKCfanGKCfan Wisconsin, United States
    And in some cases we don't know for sure about the numbers of murders.

    ***SPOILERS***

    In the short story "Yellow Iris" we never know for certain whether a death is suicide or murder.  In Curtain the main villain has almost certainly caused numerous other deaths we don't know about from the text.  
  • Tommy_A_JonesTommy_A_Jones Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
    Perhaps there should be at least two categories, Deaths caused between the Beginning and end of the book, this can include Murders that caused the Initial Investigation and Murders Committed by Characters of the book like Cards On The Table and And Then There Were None,
  • JPEmanueleJPEmanuele Nevada, United States
    I am not an avid Christie reader, whereas my partner has read a majority of Christie's novels. The other night we were watching Suchet's "Murder in Mesopotamia," and the topic of how many murders were there to be solved, how many males murdered male/females, and how many females murdered females/males. I did an internet search with no luck before stumbling upon this site. I created an account in hopes of learning more.However, after reading the comments regarding this topic, I can understand all the potential difficulties regarding an accurate count.
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