Book #32. Poirot Investigates, by Agatha Christie.
Unabridged audio.
As I mentioned just a few book reviews ago, the books of
Agatha Christie were all over the house when I grew up. And as many of these
books that my mother read, I only picked up a few. And those all featured Miss
Marple. But I didn’t read anything featuring Hercule Poirot until last year.
And this one stands out from the rest, as it a short-story
collection. This is very early in Poirot’s publishing history (1924), and
Christie is clearly still in her “Sherlock Holmes” phase. Only have read two
Poirot novels before reading this collection, what struck me as so different
was the light tone. Some of these stories were legitimately funny, and most had
moments of levity in them. Often the humor was based in the relationship of
Poirot and Hastings, who serves very well in his Dr. Watson function.
As a fan of Holmes, I appreciate the different feel between a
mystery short story and the mystery novel, and Christie does a good job telling
small mysteries. A short story needs to be more focused on plot than setting or
characterization, in order to tell a complete story in the limited page count. Christie
does a fine job telling complete mysteries in this short format.
Two stories in particular were reminiscent of Holmes stories,
“The Adventure of the Cheap Flat” and “The Kidnapped Prime Minister.” But even
with the similarities, in neither case was I able to solve the mystery before
Poirot. The themes of the stories include jealousy, revenge and good
old-fashioned greed. In particular, I enjoyed “The Adventure of the Egyptian
Tomb” and “The Million Dollar Bond Robbery.”
David Suchet does a wonderful job reading these stories. He
portrayed Poirot in the Mystery! television series, and his experience in
portraying the detective clearly shows in how well he narrates these stories.
Source: Bexley Public Library
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