Posted by David Brooks on June 22, 1999 at 14:07:18 from 207.180.26.76:
In Reply to: Re: The Big Six posted by Jon on June 21, 1999 at 18:29:14:
Don't forget Agatha Christie's "The Big Four," a dreadful 1925 novel that was really a bunch of idiotic stories strung together. Those four were bad guys, foiled by Poirot's little grey cells, so the detective connection is weak, but it shows how pervasive the "The Big (number)" terminology was.
"The Big Four" is perhaps the worst work by a very enjoyable writer, as Christie herself apparently recognized - in a later short story called (I think) "The Tale of No. 16," she made fun of it.