Poirot forms a 'Legion' of relatives of the deceased to uncover new information: Franklin Clarke, Sir Carmichael's brother Mary Drower, Ascher's niece Donald Fraser, Betty's fiancé Megan Barnard, Betty's elder sister, and Thora Grey, Sir Carmichael's young assistant. Thompson, who tries to profile the killer. The police team for the investigation, led by Chief Inspector Japp, includes Inspector Crome, who doubts Poirot's detective abilities, and Dr.

In each murder, an ABC Rail Guide is left beside the victim. Two more letters of the same nature soon arrive at his flat, each before a murder being carried out by A.B.C., and committed in alphabetical order: Alice Ascher, killed in her tobacco shop in Andover Elizabeth 'Betty' Barnard, a flirty waitress killed on the beach at Bexhill and Sir Carmichael Clarke, a wealthy man, killed at his home in Churston. Poirot shows him a mysterious letter he has received, signed 'A.B.C.', that details a crime that is to be committed very soon, which he suspects will be a murder. Returning from South America, Arthur Hastings meets with his old friend, Hercule Poirot, at his new flat in London. A reviewer in 1990 said it was 'a classic, still fresh story, beautifully worked out'. One reviewer said it was 'a baffler of the first water', while another remarked on Christie's ingenuity in the plot. The novel was well received in the UK and the US when it was published. The murders follow an alphabetical order, starting with a victim whose initials were A.

The initial premise is that a serial killer is murdering people with alliterative names. Murders the third-person narrative is supposedly reconstructed by the first-person narrator of the story, Arthur Hastings. This approach was previously used by Agatha Christie in The Man in the Brown Suit.

The form of the novel is unusual, combining first-person narrative and third-person narrative. The book was first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 6 January 1936, sold for seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) while a US edition, published by Dodd, Mead and Company on 14 February of the same year, was priced $2.00. Murders is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, featuring her characters Hercule Poirot, Arthur Hastings and Chief Inspector Japp, as they contend with a series of killings by a mysterious murderer known only as 'A.B.C.'.

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