By this time of publication of this novel, Agatha Christie had developed a huge reputation, and a large number of fans. However, when this novel was published, Agatha Christie had gone through a major upheaval in her life, with her husband declaring that he wanted to divorce her (in late 1926) after stating that he was in love with somebody else, and in December, Agatha Christie had vanished for a period of 11 days after a fight with her husband, with a massive manhunt (and till now, there is no credible story of what happened in those 11 days).
‘The Big Four’ stars the famous detective Hercule Poirot, Arthur Hastings, and Inspector Japp, the familiar figures from the Hercule Poirot series. This book is not one single long book involving a crime, but instead a series of short crimes, all of them involving the Big Four villains (and these are in turn linked to a series of short stories that appeared in a magazine called ‘Sketch’). The novel however depicts characters that are very cliched, such as the Chinese villain characterised as a Fu-Manchu type of villain, a French charming and dangerous girl, and an American multi-millionaire.

The novel starts with Hastings going to meet Hercule Poirot, who is going to America after an invitation from millionaire Abe Ryland, who is a soap king. At this time, Poirot asks whether Hastings has ever heard of a group called ‘The Big Four’, but Hastings has no idea. Then a man comes in and starts describing the various members of the The Big Four:
- Number 1 – A Chinese mastermind called Li Chang Yen, the person behind The Big Four
- Number 2 – No Names, but represented by the sign $, so most likely an American
- Number 3 – A charming French lady
- Number 4 – Just the destroyer
Poirot and Hastings faked their departure, but when they come back to the house, they find the man to be dead; the man was identified by Inspector Japp as a member of the Secret Service. And then they get into more adventures, fighting with The Big Four, including more murders.

Taxi Driver is an iconic movie, one of the earlier movies by Martin Scorsese that made him famous (starting with the reputation he had gained by Mean Streets), and stars some of the same people from the movie. The movie was nominated for 4 Academy Awards, although it did not win any (it did win a Palme d’Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival). The movie is also famous for another more nefarious reason, being linked to a Presidential assassination attempt (when John Hinckley, Jr. confessed that he was obsessed with Jodie Foster’s role in the movie as the reason for his attempt to kill President Ronald Reagen in 1981). The movie was set in a now familiar location, the seedy parts and locations of New York, with the main character being tormented by various emotional issues, almost being self-destructive. In fact, the movie was shot during a heat wave in New York, and at the time of a strike by garbage workers. The movie won critical acclaim, but also became controversial due to the violence (and in fact, Scorsese changed the colors of the ending, making the colors desaturated to try and reduce the impact of the violence).

The movie is set in the year 1976, the same movie as the year of release, and set in the period after the Vietnam War, where there were a large number of veterans out from the war, suffering through all kinds of emotional trauma. This is the story of one emotionally distraught person, 26 year old Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), who lives in Mahattan; he is not gainfully employed and covers that with his parents by claiming that he works for a government agencies where a lot of secrecy is required. In reality, he is lonely, out of work, and drives taxis in New York at night to cover his insomnia, and spends the days in porn theaters. To anybody who asks, he claims that he was a Marine during the Vietnam War, with a large VietCong flag and a scar as evidence.
He falls for a volunteer (Betsy (Cybill Shepherd)) for the election campaign of Senator Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris), who is running for President. He gets into the campaign office by offering to volunteer, and manages to get a coffee and movie date with Betsy, but blows up the romance by taking her to see a sex education movie, which offends her. She rejects his attempts after that. At around the same time, Bickle is getting more disgusted with the street crime that he sees around him, and starts to develop his body intensely. He also thinks about assassinating Senator Palatine, but drops the attempt when Secret Service agents notice him. At around this time, Iris (Jodie Foster), a 12 year old sex worker tries to use his cab to escape her pimp, but fails. When Bickle encounters her again, he gets focused on trying to save her from the clutches of her pimp Sport, and back to her parents. He gets him into more violence, including gunfire in which Bickle kills Sport (Harvey Keitel) and another customer of Iris.

This was another book of Agatha Christie that was written without her main characters of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. The book was published in 1924, and is more like a thriller than a detective novel, following the adventure of a young orphan girl who gets into a mystery after encountering an accident on the London tube station where she encounters a man who fell onto the track, and a doctor then tends to the man. While leaving, the supposed doctor drops a note which the young girl (Anne Beddingfeld) picks up, and so starts her adventure. She could have been like other people, dropping the note into a trash can, and not thinking about it again; in which case there would have been no novel, and no story. However, she did pick it up, and so started a major mystery story that crosses several countries, thrilling escapades and encounters with diamond robbers, murderers and political intrigue. Mixed in is the tale of a former international criminal called the Colonel, who organizes terrorism and who is hanging up his boots; what happened to his former agents ? Nothing, since he decides to leave them as they are and they have to tend for themselves now.

The book starts with one of the former agents, Nadina, who acts like a Russian dancer, and also another agent called Count Sergius Paulovitch, both of them agents of the Colonel, who are pondering their future. The Colonel has decided to leave them as they are, without any financial support or protection against their enemies; and they have to take care of their own future now. There are multiple people involved in this adventure, besides Anne, and as would be expected from such a book, one can never be sure about who is on the right side and who is a villain. Some of the people involved in the book are:
- Sir Eustace Pedler, MP, who is also ‘The Colonel’, a criminal mastermind
- Guy Pagett, Sir Eustace Pedler’s secretary
- Anita Grünberg, alias Nadina, alias Mrs de Castina – one-time agent of ‘The Colonel’
- Arthur Minks, alias the Rev. Edward Chichester alias Miss Pettigrew, alias Count Sergius Paulovitch – an agent of ‘The Colonel’
- Mr Flemming, solicitor, and his wife: Anne’s landlords after her father’s death
and many others.
This was a pretty interesting book, and well worth reading.

In the early 1970’s, young director Martin Scorsese was still struggling to make his mark. At that time, just after the release of ‘Boxcar Bertha’, Scorsese had started displaying his talent, but it was the release of ‘Mean Streets’ in 1973 that moved the director much ahead in his career as a director. The movie, starring Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro and David Proval, was made with the encouragement of directors such as John Cassavetes, Samuel Fuller, and Jean-Luc Godard, and was released by Warner Brothers. Based on his experience with Boxcar Bertha, Scorsese had learned how to make movies at low cost, and Mean Streets was also a low budget movie, costing only around $500,000. This was one of the first movies that Scorsese made after being told to make movies in the style he wanted rather than make movies for somebody else, and the movie established his signature style (macho men, lots of violence, emotions based on Catholic notions of guilt, and a soundtrack based on rock). The movie is set in a gritty location in New York, again like many of his other movies. Scorsese was originally planning to make the movie called as ‘Season of the Witch’, but he later changed this to ‘Mean Streets’, based on a line from author Raymond Chandler’s novel ‘The Simple Art of Murder’.

The movie was very close to Martin Scorsese, since this was based on events that he used to see everyday in the areas of New York in which he lived. The end result was a movie that earned critical acclaim, with movie critic Pauline Kael being very enthusiastic in support. The movie also earned De Niro an award (not an Oscar though) as Best Supporting Actor for his role as the destructive guy who increasingly heads towards destruction inspite of the efforts his friend Charlie. Charlie in turns plays the role of an Italian-American who is a wannabe mafia member, and who acts as a debt collector for his uncle Giovanni. He also has an ongoing affair with Teresa, who is Johnny Boy’s (De Niro) cousin.
The meat of the movie is about the conflict that Charlie faces, with his devout Catholic faith (with its concepts of good vs. bad, redemption, and guilt) versus his ambitions of making it big in the mafia (in direct conflict to his Catholic faith). How does Charlie resolve this dilemma ?