The Lost Mine

As a child I played Monopoly in the late 60s/early 70s, with my siblings. All our 'men' the boot, dog, racing car, and top hat were all made of silver metal. I've never known them to be made of anything else.

A Chinese man arrives at a London hotel; he has with him the map to a long-considered "lost" mine, and he has agreed to sell the map to an English bank. But the next day he doesn't turn up at the time of the meeting; in fact, after a few hours, he turns up dead. The president of the bank asks Hercule Poirot for help.

Apart from the Oriental flavor (it's partly shot in London's Chinatown), and a brief look at Scotland Yard's methods in the 1930's, this is for the most part a rather trivial episode of the Poirot series. But it is saved at the end by the startling revelation of the killer's identity. Up until then, it's a ** out of 4, but the last 5 minutes make it a ***. One of the clues is so obvious in retrospect that you may feel like hitting your head on the wall if you miss it (and I did....miss it , I mean).

Hercule Poirot is approached by Lord Pearson, head of Poirot's bank, to find an important client of the bank. Mr Wu Ling was due to meet Lord Pearson and sell he bank a silver mine, but he never appeared. Shortly afterwards, Mr Ling's dead body is discovered, murdered, in Chinatown. Suspicion falls on Charles Lester, a business associate of Mr Ling, but Poirot is not so sure it is him. Meanwhile, Poirot' bank balance has gone into overdraft, resulting in some of his cheques bouncing. More importantly, Poirot and Hastings are engaging in a bitter, seemingly interminable game of Monopoly.

Quite intriguing, with the murderer not being obvious at all. Some nice sub-plots, especially the Monopoly game. The scene involving Scotland Yard's first radio-communicated and controlled squad cars was quite amusing too, as Japp seemed like a kid with a new toy.

I believe there is an error in this episode in that the monopoly set used by Poirot and Hastings has as its 'men' the little silver coloured items such as the top hat. But that was a later version of monopoly dating I think from the late seventies or the eighties.

The version in my house when I was a child dated from the fifties and had as its 'men' types of transport such as ship, car, motor bike, train and they were coloured such as blue and red, not silver. There may have been an earlier version in the thirties when this was set, but it was not the one using the silver 'men'.

I would be very grateful if someone could advise me on the contents of the monopoly sets going back to the 30s so that it might be possible to check back to what would have been in place in 1935 when this Poirot story was set.

This is a very simple and basic error of poor research but unfortunately the scenes with the monopoly set recur rather frequently through the whole programme and therefore it could not be re-recorded, as I initially thought when I saw the opening scene.

Han Wu Ling arrives at a top London Hotel, his business to sell a map of a mine to a bank, but when the board meet and Mr Wu Ling is not present alarm bells start ringing.

I love Poirot's frustrations with Monopoly, and his annoyance at Hastings style of play. Poirot is right, why can't you build a hotel at the Train station?

The scenes around China town look really smart, Mr Lester's scenes inside the Opium den also look harshly realistic.

As a mystery it's not the greatest, it has to be said, if you don't get it first time around something's up, but as a production it is glorious. It has a good mix of humour and drama, the ending is utterly brilliant. The performances are excellent, Anthony Bate in particular is excellent, I've always found him an actor of huge charisma, with such a strong presence. 9/10