TV REVIEW : Poirot Meets His Maker in A&E;’s ‘Murder by the Book’

Hercule Poirot, all greased and arrogant as usual, has come to investigate a murder--his own.

And when he learns that it will not be an interesting murder but a simple, mundane and everyday heart attack, he is furious. (We know his ego.) He insists to his Maker that he “wants a proper death worthy of both of us!”

“Murder by the Book,” an hour drama airing Sunday at 5 p.m. and again at 9 p.m. on the Arts & Entertainment cable network, is written and produced by Nick Evans and stars Ian Holm as the wily Belgian and Peggy Ashcroft as his Maker, Agatha Christie.

As the story here has it, Christie wrote the final book on Poirot 35 years ago, putting him to eternal rest. But she was talked out of publishing it--until now. Poirot hears of this and turns up in the night.

It’s a romp, these old-pro actors doing old-pro masterminds of murder, battering each other with repartee and screaming frustrations. Agatha is jealous that everybody is always asking about Poirot, Poirot, Poirot. He rages that, after all, it is he who sells all her books--and he has never forgiven her tiny little brain cells for composing him as some silly, “narcissistic penguin.”

Reason expended on both sides, they invoke knives and guns and Agatha’s special favorite, poison.

We can’t divulge the ending except to report the most obvious fact--that these folks will never die.