Tag: Poirot

The 1947 Club: The Labours of Hercules by Agatha Christie

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1947-club-pink This week, Karen (of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings) and Simon (of Stuck in a Book) are hosting a 1947 Club. The idea is that we all read and review books which were published in 1947, forming an overview of the literary world in that particular year. Having enjoyed the books I read for the first two clubs – 1924 and 1938 – I’ve been looking forward to taking part in this one.

First, here are some reviews of 1947 novels previously posted on my blog:

The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada

Prince of Foxes by Samuel Shellabarger

I can highly recommend all three of those – and I also enjoyed the book I chose to read for the club: Agatha Christie’s The Labours of Hercules. I love Christie and as it’s been a while since I read one of her books, I was pleased to find that she’d had one published in 1947!

the-labours-of-hercules The Labours of Hercules begins with a foreword in which we learn that Hercule Poirot is planning to retire from crime-solving and devote himself to the growing of marrows. Before giving up detective work for good, he decides to take on twelve more cases, each inspired by one of the twelve Labours of Hercules from Greek mythology. This is in response to a friend who has pointed out that although Poirot may be Herculean by name, he is hardly Herculean by nature!

The foreword is followed by twelve stories, each one a complete mystery in itself. If you’re familiar with the original Labours of Hercules (Poirot himself admits to having no knowledge of the Classics and has to do some research before beginning his mission), you will know that the first one involves the slaying of the Nemean Lion. The ‘lion’ of Poirot’s first Labour is slightly less terrifying – a Pekinese dog stolen during a walk in the park – but it forms the basis of a case which is much more intriguing than it initially appears. The other stories in the book are also loosely related to the Labours but instead of tackling monsters and wild beasts, Poirot finds himself facing an assortment of thieves, drug dealers, kidnappers and murderers.

Until now, I have only read full-length Poirot novels and have avoided the short story collections as I often find short stories disappointing, lacking the depth and complexity I prefer in longer books. However, this particular collection is surprisingly satisfying; fun to read, nicely varied and with at least one clever twist in each story. I’m not going to discuss all of them here, but a few of my favourites were The Stymphalean Birds, in which Poirot attempts to rescue a British politician from the clutches of a pair of blackmailers, and The Cretan Bull, where a young woman seeks Poirot’s help after her fiancé ends their engagement because he fears he’s going insane. I also enjoyed The Erymanthian Boar, set in a hotel on top of a mountain in Switzerland to which Poirot has travelled in the hope of disturbing a rendezvous arranged by a dangerous Parisian gangster.

Poirot is very much alone throughout most of his adventures in this book. We don’t see anything of Captain Hastings, but other recurring characters from the series do make an appearance in some of the stories, including Chief Inspector Japp, Poirot’s valet, Georges, and his secretary, Miss Lemon (I loved her brief but hilarious role in the final story, The Capture of Cerberus, when Poirot asks her what she would do if a friend wanted to meet her in Hell).

Apart from one or two stories towards the end which I found slightly weaker than the others, I really enjoyed reading this collection. I’m sorry that I’m not going to have time to read anything else this week for the 1947 Club, but I’m pleased that the one book I have read proved to be such a good choice!

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie

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Hercule Poirots Christmas I hope you’ve all had a good Christmas! Mine hasn’t been great, unfortunately. My grandfather, who is eighty-five, fell and broke his shoulder last week and has been in hospital over Christmas. Because of his age and poor general health, the doctors haven’t been able to say whether he will make a full recovery or when he might be able to go home. My grandmother, who also has health problems, can’t be left on her own so we are all helping out with taking care of her until we know what long-term arrangements will need to be made. As you can probably imagine, it’s been quite a stressful time and not conducive to writing good book reviews, so this is just a short post to record some thoughts on a recent Christmas-themed read.

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas is a classic locked-room murder mystery which begins with an elderly millionaire, Simeon Lee, inviting various members of his family to spend Christmas with him at his home, Gorston Hall. The family are surprised and suspicious – they are not all on speaking terms and as they begin to gather at Simeon’s house tensions are running high. When the old man is found dead in a pool of blood in his locked bedroom on Christmas Eve, there is no shortage of suspects.

Who could the killer be? Could it be one of Simeon’s sons – the money-obsessed George, maybe, or Harry, who has been estranged from the rest of the family for many years – or one of their wives? What about Pilar Estravados, Simeon’s granddaughter, newly arrived from Spain? Or Stephen Farr, son of Simeon’s former business partner, who has come unexpectedly from South Africa? Hercule Poirot is called in to investigate and as he begins to piece together what happened on the night of the murder, some family secrets are brought to light.

This is not very high on my list of favourite Agatha Christie novels, but I did enjoy it. As usual, I failed to solve the mystery before Poirot did and although there were a few times when I thought I’d figured it out, I never even came close to being correct! Despite the title, it’s not a particularly Christmassy book (Christmas Day passes almost without mention) but I found it fun, entertaining and quick to read, which is just what I was in the mood for. I was reminded of Envious Casca by Georgette Heyer, which is also set at Christmas and has a similar storyline.

With plenty of other unread Christie novels still to look forward to, I’m sure I’ll be reading more Poirot in 2016.

Peril at End House by Agatha Christie

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Peril at End House I love Agatha Christie’s books but although there are still a lot that I haven’t read, I find that it works better for me to space them out and read other things in between. It’s been almost a year since the last Christie novel I read, so last week I decided it was time to read another one. This one, Peril at End House, is an early Poirot mystery, published in 1932.

At the beginning of the novel, Hercule Poirot and his friend, Captain Hastings, are taking a holiday in the seaside resort of St Loo. If they were hoping for a peaceful, relaxing break, though, they are about to be disappointed. Taking a walk outside their hotel, they meet a young woman called Nick who lives nearby at End House. As they stand chatting to Nick, she swats away what she thinks is a wasp – and then finds a hole in the brim of her hat and a bullet lying on the ground. Poirot is concerned, especially when she tells him of three other occasions when she has narrowly escaped death in the last few days, but Nick herself appears less worried – she can’t imagine why anybody would want her dead and insists that the incidents must just be accidents.

Poirot resolves to do everything he can to keep Nick safe from harm while he investigates, but it seems that his efforts are in vain as the murder attempts continue. Meanwhile, he uncovers a number of suspects among Nick’s friends and family ranging from her closest living relative, Charles Vyse, and her best friend, Frederica Rice, to her housekeeper Ellen and her Australian lodgers, Mr and Mrs Croft. And as more information comes to light, Poirot discovers that there may in fact be a very good reason for the attempts on Nick’s life.

As I approached the halfway point in this book, I was thinking that this was a very average Poirot novel – not a particularly notable entry in the series at all. I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge because there were some great twists and turns towards the end and the mystery ended up being a much more complex and clever one than I had thought at first.

When I wrote about the last Poirot novel I read – Cat Among the Pigeons – I remarked that that particular book was unusual because Poirot didn’t appear until near the end. This one is the opposite, as Poirot is there in the middle of the action right from the first page and we are plunged straight into the mystery, with little time spent on setting the scene or providing background. Like several of the other early Poirot novels, Captain Hastings narrates the story, which I like because although we don’t actually get inside Poirot’s head, he does at least explain some of his thought processes to Hastings as he goes along.

As so often happens when I read Agatha Christie, I did actually guess the correct solution (or part of it, anyway) very early in the book – and then dismissed the idea as the plot developed and red herrings were dropped into the story, leading me off the scent. The reader is given all the information needed to be able to identify the murderer and their motives, but it’s easy to overlook one or two of the most important clues. Even Poirot himself missed those clues too, which made me feel better about it!

This is not a favourite Poirot novel, but I did enjoy it. Have you read this one? Did you manage to solve the mystery or did you allow Christie to lead you in the wrong direction?

Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie

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Cat Among the Pigeons Cat Among the Pigeons, published in 1959, is one of Agatha Christie’s later Poirot mysteries and combines a girls’ school setting with the story of a revolution in Ramat, a fictional country in the Middle East. I still have a lot of reading to do before I’ll have finished all of the Poirot books, but this is one that I’ve particularly enjoyed.

Most of the action takes place at Meadowbank School, an exclusive girls-only school in England which is still run by its two founders, Miss Bulstrode and Miss Chadwick, but first we visit Ramat, where Prince Ali Yusuf is preparing to escape the uprising in his country. In an attempt to keep some of his fortune safe, the Prince gives some valuable jewels to his pilot and asks him to smuggle them out of the country. The pilot’s sister and young niece, Jennifer, have been visiting Ramat but are due to return to England the next day, so he hides the jewels in their luggage without telling them what he has done.

Back in England, Jennifer begins attending Meadowbank School, one of several new girls to join the school that term. There are also some new teachers, a new secretary and a new gardener. When a murder takes place at the school a few weeks later, it seems that whoever committed the crime may have been trying to find the missing jewels. Is there someone at Meadowbank who shouldn’t be there? In other words, is there a ‘cat among the pigeons’?

Well, I was completely fooled by this one! While I found it very easy to guess the hiding place of the jewels, I did not guess who the murderer was until the truth was revealed. The most annoying thing was that I did originally suspect the right person but was thrown off the scent halfway through the book and decided I must have been wrong. After that, I think I suspected almost everybody!

As I was reading I kept wondering when Hercule Poirot himself was going to enter the story and I was surprised to find that he doesn’t actually make his first appearance until the final third of the book. By the time he arrives on the scene the mystery has already been partially solved and while he does unravel the rest of the clues and identify the murderer, I’m not sure Poirot’s involvement really added anything to the story.

Although the mystery was a good one that kept me guessing, the reason I enjoyed this book so much was the setting rather than the plot. Like many British children I grew up reading Enid Blyton books and still have very fond memories of them. I loved her two school series, St Clare’s and Malory Towers, and in Cat Among the Pigeons Agatha Christie captures the same sort of atmosphere. The school setting, the focus on the lives of the girls and their teachers, and the very late appearance of Poirot, gives this book a slightly different feel from the others I’ve read.

Have you read this one? Which is your favourite Poirot mystery?

The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie

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Ruth Kettering is an American heiress who receives a set of valuable rubies as a gift from her father. Despite his warnings to keep them somewhere safe, Ruth takes the jewels with her on a trip to Nice. During her journey through France on the famous Blue Train, Ruth is found strangled to death in her compartment – and the case containing the rubies has disappeared. Hercule Poirot, who also happens to be travelling on the same train, promises to help Ruth’s father solve the crime and identify the killer. Suspicion falls first on Ruth’s husband, Derek Kettering, whom she had been about to divorce, and then on the mysterious Comte de la Roche. Is one of them the murderer?

I grabbed The Mystery of the Blue Train from the library shelf without really knowing anything about it. A bit of research now tells me it’s one of Agatha Christie’s less popular Poirot novels and now that I’ve read it I think I can see why. It was written quite early in her career and at a troubled time in her personal life, and apparently the author herself was unhappy with it. The book does have all the elements that should have added up to a classic Christie novel (a rich heiress, a journey on a luxury train, jewel thieves, the South of France – and Hercule Poirot himself, of course) but while I did enjoy it, I still felt there was something missing.

Compared to the other Agatha Christie books I’ve read, which admittedly isn’t all that many, this one was much longer and seemed to take a while to really get started (the actual crime doesn’t take place until about 100 pages into the book). There was a very long wait before Poirot made his first appearance and instead we spend a lot of time being introduced to other characters, which would have been okay had I liked these characters, but I found them a bit stereotypical, from the American millionaire to the French count to the old antiques dealer.

There were also a few sub-plots that I felt didn’t really add much to the story, although I did enjoy the dialogue between Poirot and Katherine Grey, a young woman he meets on the train who becomes involved in the murder investigation. The mystery itself kept me guessing, though I think there were probably enough clues to be able to work out at least part of the solution, if you were paying more attention than I was! The Mystery of the Blue Train was entertaining in places but is probably my least favourite Christie novel so far.

Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie

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Death in the Clouds, first published in 1935, is one of Agatha Christie’s many novels featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

Ten people are travelling on a plane flying from Paris to London. During the flight a woman is found dead in her seat – apparently a murder has taken place without anyone seeing it happen. Among the other passengers is Poirot, who can’t believe a crime has taken place right under his nose! The mystery proves a difficult one to solve and after landing in England the suspects are allowed to go back to their everyday lives. As Poirot continues to investigate, he uncovers some secrets about the murdered woman and discovers that more than one of her fellow passengers had a reason to want her dead…

Like many classic mysteries, the crime takes place in a confined space so that we know from the beginning who the suspects are. The fact that this novel is set on a plane makes a nice change from the usual country house! The suspects include a beautiful aristocrat with a cocaine addiction, two prominent archaeologists, a doctor, a dentist, a businessman, a hairdresser – and my personal favourite, a crime novelist, whose inclusion gives Christie a chance to have some fun at the expense of her own genre. The characters don’t have a lot of depth and there are only a few that we get to know well, yet Christie makes it easy to remember who is who. There are plenty of red herrings to make the reader suspect first one person and then another; it’s even possible that Poirot himself could have committed the murder!

I enjoyed studying the seating plan at the front of the book and the list of the contents of the passengers’ luggage in an attempt to work out what had happened – but as usual, I didn’t even come close to solving the mystery. In a way I’m glad that my crime-solving skills are so bad because it means I can be surprised by all the twists and turns of the plot as the author intended.

I’m having fun working through all the Agatha Christie books available from my library’s ebook section, so you can expect some more Christie posts from me in the near future. It’s funny because her books had never held much appeal for me in the past, though maybe I was just unlucky with the ones I was choosing to read. Although Death in the Clouds is not one of the best that I’ve read so far, it was still an enjoyable read.