Review – Poirot Investigates

Posted September 30, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Poirot Investigates

by Agatha Christie

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Short Stories
Pages: 265
Series: Hercule Poirot #3
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
The very first collection of superb short stories featuring Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings…

First there was the mystery of the film star and the diamond… then came the ‘suicide’ that was murder… the mystery of the absurdly cheap flat… a suspicious death in a locked gun-room… a million dollar bond robbery… the curse of a pharaoh’s tomb… a jewel robbery by the sea… the abduction of a Prime Minister… the disappearance of a banker… a phone call from a dying man… and, finally, the mystery of the missing will.

What links these fascinating cases? Only the brilliant deductive powers of Hercule Poirot!

The unfortunate thing about this collection of short stories (from my perspective at least) is that unfortunately, Poirot’s fairly dense sidekick Hastings is a major player in each. Poirot himself is not so bad in the short stories of Agatha Christie’s Poirot Investigates, and even Hastings doesn’t have much room to make an ass of himself, but I still don’t like the character.

There are some interesting mysteries here, but I can’t say any of them really jumped out at me and stuck in my memory. The one where Poirot recounts a case where he fails and Hastings gently tries to pierce his ego afterwards made me laugh, though.

Another thing to be wary of with Agatha Christie is the casual racism that gets sprinkled around. I noticed it quite a bit in these short stories.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: Agatha Christie, book reviews, books, crime, mystery, short stories