Hercule Poirot, Nouvelles complètes

Hercule Poirot #0.1-0.51

by Agatha Christie

Silhouette ronde et joviale, moustaches cirées, œil vif et cellules grises en activité constante, Hercule Poirot, réfugié en Angleterre pendant la guerre, décide de s’y établir et devient détective privé. Né de l’imagination d’Agatha Christie, il apparaît dans une quarantaine de romans et dans une cinquantaine de nouvelles. Réunie dans ce volume, voici l’intégralité des nouvelles qui permettent d’apprécier le talent et l’esprit d’analyse d’un détective pour lequel la meilleure façon de résoudre une énigme est de s’asseoir dans un fauteuil pour utiliser au mieux ses célèbres petites cellules grises. Maniaque, toujours tiré à quatre épingles et soucieux autant de la morale que de son confort, il apparaît souvent ridicule aux yeux de ses adversaires qui le sous-estiment. Il n’en déjoue pourtant pas moins, et avec quelle maestria, les mécaniques criminelles les plus subtiles.

Genres: Mystery, Agatha Christie, Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Crime, Mystery Thriller

1200 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Agatha Christie also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, and was occasionally published under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan.

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.

This best-selling author of all time wrote 66 crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and six novels under a pseudonym in romance. Her books sold more than a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation. According to Index Translationum, people translated her works into 103 languages at least, the most for an individual author. Of the most enduring figures in crime literature, she created Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. She atuhored The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of modern theater.

Associated Names:
Agata Christie
Agata Kristi
Агата Кристи (Russian)
Агата Крісті (Ukrainian)
Αγκάθα Κρίστι (Greek)
アガサ クリスティ (Japanese)
阿嘉莎·克莉絲蒂 (Chinese)

Reviews

[Luffy Sempai · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review is bound to be boring. Have I lost you already? Anyway, if I had read the book recently for the first time, then I'd have set the rating at 5 stars. But who's counting?

The brain behind this series is long dead. If only the life span of us humans was 200 or 300 years. Imagine Agatha Christie now in her prime, trying to write (and easily succeeding) stories that enchant the mind and ensnare the senses.

This is the second best collection of short stories I've ever read. What's the first? Stay tuned.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Completionists beware!
Even though I'm not sorry that I now own this.



I bought this thinking that it would be my best bet to read some of the harder-to-find Poirot stories because it says that it has his entire casebook. Well, yes and no. And this will only be an issue for people like myself who are trying to track every version of every story down, but it does not contain everything.



For example, this doesn't have The Submarine Plans but it does contain the longer version of that story, The Incredible Theft. It has The Mystery of the Spanish Chest but not the shorter short story that spawned it, The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest. ETC.
If you're on the hunt for this stuff, then you know why I got frustrated. When I bought my copy online, I couldn't find a definitive list of all of the stories contained inside and it was a disappointment for me to open it up and not have everything I was hoping for.



Yes. I know exactly how weird I sound.
Again, this will NOT be an issue for the casual reader, and I would definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to own Poirot's short stories.

If you're interested in any of the stories listed here, I've linked a review to each.

The Affair at the Victory Ball
The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan
The King of Clubs
The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim
The Plymouth Express
The Adventure of The Western Star
The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor
The Kidnapped Prime Minister
The Million Dollar Bond Robbery
The Adventure of the Cheap Flat
The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge
The Chocolate Box
The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb
The Veiled Lady
The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly
The Market Basing Mystery
The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman
The Case of the Missing Will
The Incredible Theft
The Adventure of the Clapham Cook
The Lost Mine
The Cornish Mystery
The Double Clue
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
The Lemesurier Inheritance
The Under Dog
Double Sin
Wasps' Nest
The Third-Floor Flat
The Mystery of the Spanish Chest
Dead Man's Mirror
How Does Your Garden Grow?
Problem at Sea
Triangle at Rhodes
Murder in the Mews
Yellow Iris
The Dream
The Labours of Hercules, the Foreword
The Nemean Lion
The Lernean Hydra
The Arcadian Deer
The Erymanthian Boar
The Augean Stables
The Stymphalean Birds
The Cretan Bull
The Horses of Diomedes
The Girdle of Hyppolita
The Flock of Geryon
The Apples of the Hesperides
The Capture of Cerberus
Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds

[Bobby Underwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though I have Murder in the Mews, the mass market paperback which contains the title story, and three other great Poirot short stories by Agatha Christie, when I ran across this one some long while ago in Mogo on vacation, I had to have it. The introduction, called Enter Poirot, is by Christie herself, from An Autobiography, and it’s nice that it’s included. The Affair at the Victory Ball from 1923 begins a salvo of chronologically arranged Poirot short stories like no other.

Reading through this one took me quite some time after I acquired it, and now I return to it for brief periods to read one of them again. Because I’ve seen all the David Suchet adaptations on television over the years, which are wonderful, it was nice to note some small differences here and there in some stories. Overall, however, it was nostalgic reading these stories, and being able to picture the events playing out better because of having seen — many times — the adaptations starring Suchet as Poirot.

As another nice review here mentions, being objective here is nearly impossible at this juncture. Sure, some of the stories aren’t as good as the others, and these have taken on a legendary status for mystery lovers. But it doesn’t matter, because there are so many wonderful moments that a cumulative effect begins to takes place. All we remember is how much we love these Poirot mysteries, and how much affection we have for Hastings, Miss Lemon, and yes, Japp. Reading these stories is like visiting old friends.

We’re on page 865 here when we get a fabulous bonus to all the stories we know so well — and perhaps a few we’ve forgotten. Here we come to a postscript, which is Poirot and the Regatta Mystery. In 1936 it appeared in both The Chicago Tribune, and across the pond, in The Strand. When Christie released it in book form, however, in 1939, she had reworked it into a Parker Pyne story! Here we have it in its original form, as a Hercule Poirot story. At the time of this printing in 1999, it had been over 60 years since the original Poirot version had been in print.

After this, we get a chronological appendix of Agatha Christie’s short story publications between 1923 and 1971, both in America and in Britain, listing the dates, issue numbers, and magazines in which they appeared. And it isn’t just Poirot, but Marple too, and Tommy and Tuppence, Parker Pyne, Harley Quin, non-series stories, and 6 children’s stories! For someone trying to collect Christie in magazine form, it’s invaluable, but for the average reader, it’s simply cool to have it included.

It just doesn’t get better than this for Poirot fans. It’s big and thick — 50+ stories! — and encompasses all of Poirot in the short form. Great to own, fun to return to now and again, and highly recommended!

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, who is Hercule Poirot?

Agatha Christie fans will appreciate her imaginative powers of creation in this particular character – a refugee from the German invasion of Belgium that brought Britain into WWI. She gave him such a rich history. He became a ranking policeman in the city of Brussels, before coming to London to become a private investigator solving crimes and sharing a flat with an ex-officer of that same war, Captain Hastings.

In many respects, we could also see Captain Hastings as his Dr. Watson, the man who would carry the revolver in emergencies and who was the sounding board for his theories.

Christie made Poirot in his first case, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, a foolish-type figure. She was very particular in her description of him as a short, portly man, with an egg-shaped head.

And… Let us not forget his little mannerisms, and his attention to his mustache. Always attention to his most famous mustache.

Or…His immaculate clothes of a bygone era.

Still…She also gave him an incisive brain similar to that of Sherlock Holmes. A sharp mind that could cut through any lies or secrets and find the murderer when not even Scotland Yard’s greatest detectives could.

David Suchet, portrayed Poirot to perfection in the PBS series. Albert Finney did so on ‘Murder on the Orient Express.’

But… Suchet is the one I see when I visualized Poirot and read these 51 grand short stories this past month in-between all the other books I was reading and reviewing.

Still… Even as I allowed myself to be carried away in these stories that I have read before (because they still felt as fresh as if I had never read them or seen them performed)…

Who was Poirot really?

Poirot is a bit of a mystery himself. Christie doesn’t divulge a lot about him.

Like…how old was he really? Why did he choose not to marry? What was his connection to Captain Hastings? How did Poirot earn a statue in his Belgian town? How did he earn the money to live so well?

Like Christie…Poirot has secrets.

Can we as readers find out just a little bit more of Poirot through these pages? Besides what Poirot solves in each of these cases?

What I can say is that anyone who is an Agatha Christie fan of Poirot, this will be a joyful read.

For those unfamiliar, this is a chance to learn about a “new” crime professional.

Any one of these stories will be an opportunity to breeze through times past and experience a different way of solving crimes. Using one’s keen observations. Letting his gray cells be awakened and our reading pleasures be ignited.

Either way, we all get something from the experience.

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won a school prize once in my life: aged eleven, the primary school English prize. I was given my £10 book token, and instead of buying the dictionary I was supposed to get, I chose the complete Hercule Poirot short stories. I was aided and abetted by my mother, who approves of buying 800-page tomes as a treat, and I'm pretty sure my form tutor was likewise pleased--we're talking about the man who had spent the last year introducing me to the concept of Sherlock Holmes.

I read it over the summer, and this is still one of my favourite possessions. Agatha Christie has her flaws (and most of them involve foreigners), but she can write a story, and a situation, and a punchline, and she does it really well, again, and again, and again. Eleven-year-old me loved playing with the permutations. I love especially that she reuses character names, and tropes, and none of them are safe. Anyone could be the victim, and anyone (with two exceptions) could be the murderer.

The exceptions, of course, are the lovers. The optimistic young lady and whichever gentleman blushes the most when he's talking to her. This need not be the person she's intending to marry at the beginning, but he will be by the end. There's a flaw in your armour, Agatha. But even then, there's Orient Express. Nobody's safe.

This book is everything I like about Agatha Christie, all put in one place so you can take a microscope to it, compare things directly. I loved it then, I love it now. The older I get, the more respect I have for it.

[Rizwan Khalil · Rating 5 out of 5]

পুরো একমাস লাগিয়ে ৮৮০ পৃষ্ঠার এরকুল পোয়ারো-কে নিয়ে লেখা যাবতীয় গল্পসমগ্রটা পড়লাম। রহস্যগল্পগুলি যথাসম্ভব ক্রনলজিক্যালি সিরিয়াল মেইন্টেন করে পড়ার চেষ্টা করেছি, সুখের বিষয় বইয়ের ভেতরে গল্পগুলোকে সংকলন করা হয়েছে প্রথম প্রকাশের তারিখ উল্লেখ করে ক্রমানুসারে। সঙ্কলিত ৫০টি (প্রায়) সামগ্রিক পোয়ারো-গল্পের প্রথম ২৫টাই আগাথা ক্রিস্টি লিখেছিলেন ১৯২৩ সালে, সারা বছর ধরে 'দ্য স্কেচ' সাপ্তাহিক পত্রিকায় নিয়মিত পোয়ারো-গল্প প্রকাশ পেয়েছিল। সেসময় মাত্র একটা পোয়ারো উপন্যাস বেরিয়েছে, সর্বপ্রথম 'দ্য মিস্টিরিয়াস অ্যাফেয়ারস অ্যাট স্টাইলস', তাই বলা যায় ক্রিস্টির এই কালোত্তীর্ণ মাস্টারপীস রহস্যগল্পগুলির মধ্য দিয়েই বেলজিয়ান গোয়েন্দা এরকুল পোয়ারো পাঠকদের কাছে ক্রমে ক্রমে পরিচিত হয়ে উঠতে আর পাঠকমনে চিরতরে জায়গা করে নিতে শুরু করেন। প্রফেশনাল গোয়েন্দা হিসেবে পোয়ারোর ক্যারিয়ারের প্রভাত থেকে মধ্যগগনও এই কেইসগুলোই। প্রথম দিকের ২৬টা গল্পে পোয়ারোর সঙ্গে রয়েছে তার ঘনিষ্ঠতম বন্ধু ও বিশ্বস্ত সহকারী ক্যাপ্টেন হেস্টিংস। পোয়ারো-হেস্টিংস-এর চারিত্রিক বৈপরীত্য ও মজাদার রসায়ন গল্পগুলোতে একটা অন্যমাত্রার উপভোগ্যতা এনে দিয়েছিল। দ্বিতীয় পূর্নাঙ্গ উপন্যাস 'মার্ডার অন দ্য লিঙ্কস' ১৯২৩-এই প্রকাশিত হয়, আর তার শেষে ঘটে হেস্টিংসের প্রণয়-বিবাহ, তাই পরবর্তী গল্পগুলোতে হেস্টিংস অনুপস্থিত, অগত্যা পোয়ারোর একা একাই সর্বত্র রহস্য সমাধানে যাওয়া-আসা।

তবে পোয়ারো একা থাকুক বা দোকা, পোয়ারোর পেশাদার গোয়েন্দাজীবনের বৈচিত্র্যময় সব কেইস সমাধানে রহস্য-রোমাঞ্চ-অ্যাডভেঞ্চারের কোনো অভাব নেই... এতগুলি গল্প পড়লাম কিন্তু বলতে পারব না যে কোনো একটাও গল্প ফেলে দেয়ার মতো বা শান দেয়া তীক্ষ্ণ বুদ্ধির খেলায় কোথাও বিন্দুমাত্র কমতি পড়েছে। পূর্ণদৈর্ঘ্য উপন্যাসের বদলে মাত্র ২-৩ পৃষ্ঠার ছোটখাট সব নাতিদীর্ঘ গল্পেও যে আগাথা ক্রিস্টি অতুলনীয়, একের পর এক প্যাচের ধাক্কা দেয়া হতবাক করা টুইস্টের কোনো কার্পণ্য নেই তা এই রত্নভান্ডারটা যে পাঠক না পড়েছে সে কখনো পুরোপুরি অনুধাবন করতে পারবে না। আর কী অদ্ভূত বিচিত্র সব কেইস! একজন আজীবন নিখাঁঁদ রহস্যপ্রেমী হিসেবে আমার মতে প্রত্যেক রহস্যপাঠকের ক্রিস্টি'র এই 'এরকুল পোয়ারো: দ্য কমপ্লিট শর্ট স্টোরিজ' নামের অমূল্য গ্রন্থটির সবক'টা ক্লাসিক রহস্যগল্প জীবনে একবারের জন্য হলেও অবশ্যপাঠ্য।

বইটা পড়ার সময় সময়কাল-ঘটনাক্রম-প্রকাশকাল মিলিয়ে নিজের মতো করে সকল গল্প-উপন্যাস সহ একটা যথাসম্ভব নিখুঁঁত পোয়ারো কেইসফাইলস ক্রনলজি তৈরি করার চেষ্টা করেছিলাম, সেটা এখানে উল্লেখ করে দিচ্ছি:

01. The Mysterious Affairs at Styles (উপন্যাস)
02. The Affair at the Victory Ball (গল্প)
03. The Kidnapped Prime Minister (গল্প)
04. The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan (গল্প)
05. The King of Clubs (গল্প)
06. The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim (গল্প)
07. The Plymouth Express (গল্প)
08. The Adventure of the Western Star (গল্প)
09. The Tragedy of the Marsdon Manor (গল্প)
10. The Million Dollar Bond Robbery (গল্প)
11. The Adventure of the Cheap Flat (গল্প)
12. The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge (গল্প)
13. The Chocolate Box (গল্প)
14. The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb (গল্প)
15. The Veiled Lady (গল্প)
16. The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly (গল্প)
17. The Market Basing Mystery (গল্প)
18. The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman (গল্প)
19. The Case of the Missing Will (গল্প)
20. The Submarine Plans (গল্প)
21. The Adventure of the Clapham Cook (গল্প)
22. The Lost Mine (গল্প)
23. The Cornish Mystery (গল্প)
24. The Double Clue (গল্প)
25. The Lemesurier Inheritance (গল্প)
26. Double Sin (গল্প)
27. The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest (গল্প)
28. Murder on the Links (উপন্যাস)
29. The Christmas Adventure (গল্প)
30. The Under Dog (উপন্যাসিকা)
31. The Big Four (উপন্যাস)
32. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (উপন্যাস)
33. The Mystery of the Blue Train (উপন্যাস)
34. Wasps’ Nest (গল্প)
35. The Third-Floor Flat (গল্প)
36. Black Coffee (নাটক)
37. The Second Gong (গল্প)
38. Peril at End House (উপন্যাস)
39. Lord Edgware Dies (উপন্যাস)
40. Murder in Mesopotamia (উপন্যাস)
41. Murder on the Orient Express (উপন্যাস)
42. Three Act Tragedy (উপন্যাস)
43. Death in the Clouds (উপন্যাস)
44. How Does Your Garden Grow? (গল্প)
45. The A B C Murders (উপন্যাস)
46. Problem at Sea (গল্প)
47. Poirot and the Regatta Mystery (গল্প)
48. Cards on the Table (উপন্যাস)
49. Triangle at Rhodes (উপন্যাসিকা)
50. Murder in the Mews (উপন্যাসিকা)
51. The Incredible Theft (উপন্যাসিকা)
52. Dead Man’s Mirror (উপন্যাসিকা)
53. Dumb Witness (উপন্যাস)
54. Yellow Iris (গল্প)
55. The Dream (গল্প)
56. Death on the Nile (উপন্যাস)
57. Appointment with Death (উপন্যাস)
58. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (উপন্যাস)
59. Sad Cypress (উপন্যাস)
60. The Nemean Lion (গল্প)
61. The Lernaean Hydra (গল্প)
62. The Arcadian Deer (গল্প)
63. The Erymanthian Boar (গল্প)
64. The Augean Stables (গল্প)
65. The Stymphalean Birds (গল্প)
66. The Cretan Bull (গল্প)
67. The Horses of Diomedes (গল্প)
68. The Girdle of Hippolyta (গল্প)
69. The Flock of Geryon (গল্প)
70. The Apples of the Hesperides (গল্প)
71. The Capture of Cerberus (গল্প)
72. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (উপন্যাস)
73. Four and Twenty Blackbirds (গল্প)
74. Evil Under the Sun (উপন্যাস)
75. Five Little Pigs (উপন্যাস)
76. The Hollow (উপন্যাস)
77. Taken at the Flood (উপন্যাস)
78. Mrs. McGinty’s Dead (উপন্যাস)
79. After the Funeral (উপন্যাস)
80. Hickory Dickory Dock (উপন্যাস)
81. Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly (উপন্যাসিকা)
82. Dead Man’s Folly (উপন্যাস)
83. Cat Among the Pigeons (উপন্যাস)
84. The Mystery of the Spanish Chest (উপন্যাসিকা)
85. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (উপন্যাসিকা)
86. The Clocks (উপন্যাস)
87. Third Girl (উপন্যাস)
88. Hallowe’en Party (উপন্যাস)
89. Elephants Can Remember (উপন্যাস)
90. Curtain (উপন্যাস)

৩৩টি উপন্যাস, ৫৬টি গল্প/উপন্যাসিকা, ১টি নাটক = ৯০টি এরকুল পোয়ারো কেইস ফাইলস। প্রায় সবই স্ট্যান্ডএলোন, তবে যেহেতু আমি নিজে চিরকাল পোয়ারোর মতোই "অর্ডার অ্যান্ড মেথোড" মেইন্টেন করে চলতে পছন্দ করি, তাই কেবল নিজের শখেই এই তালিকা।

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Completionists beware!
Even though I'm not sorry that I now own this.



I bought this thinking that it would be my best bet to read some of the harder-to-find Poirot stories because it says that it has his entire casebook. Well, yes and no. And this will only be an issue for people like myself who are trying to track every version of every story down, but it does not contain everything.



For example, this doesn't have The Submarine Plans but it does contain the longer version of that story, The Incredible Theft. It has The Mystery of the Spanish Chest but not the shorter short story that spawned it, The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest. ETC.
If you're on the hunt for this stuff, then you know why I got frustrated. When I bought my copy online, I couldn't find a definitive list of all of the stories contained inside and it was a disappointment for me to open it up and not have everything I was hoping for.



Yes. I know exactly how weird I sound.
Again, this will NOT be an issue for the casual reader, and I would definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to own Poirot's short stories.

If you're interested in any of the stories listed here, I've linked a review to each.

The Affair at the Victory Ball
The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan
The King of Clubs
The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim
The Plymouth Express
The Adventure of The Western Star
The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor
The Kidnapped Prime Minister
The Million Dollar Bond Robbery
The Adventure of the Cheap Flat
The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge
The Chocolate Box
The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb
The Veiled Lady
The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly
The Market Basing Mystery
The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman
The Case of the Missing Will
The Incredible Theft
The Adventure of the Clapham Cook
The Lost Mine
The Cornish Mystery
The Double Clue
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
The Lemesurier Inheritance
The Under Dog
Double Sin
Wasps' Nest
The Third-Floor Flat
The Mystery of the Spanish Chest
Dead Man's Mirror
How Does Your Garden Grow?
Problem at Sea
Triangle at Rhodes
Murder in the Mews
Yellow Iris
The Dream
The Labours of Hercules, the Foreword
The Nemean Lion
The Lernean Hydra
The Arcadian Deer
The Erymanthian Boar
The Augean Stables
The Stymphalean Birds
The Cretan Bull
The Horses of Diomedes
The Girdle of Hyppolita
The Flock of Geryon
The Apples of the Hesperides
The Capture of Cerberus
Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds

[Vikas Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for every Christie fan. The collection includes every single short story featuring Hercule Poirot. The stories have over time appeared as part of various collections. Finally they all have been compiled in one place. The cover is the illustration by renowned artist W.Smithson Broadhead who was specially commissioned by Bruce Ingram , editor of Sketch in which many of Christie's early stories appear

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 3 out of 5]

 
A Collection of Canapés

It is ridiculous, of course, to read 51 mystery stories back to back with one another, yet I don't want to keep this useful collection on my "currently reading" shelf for ever. Hence the baptism of my new "hiatus" shelf. I imagine it will come in handy for some other story collections, as well as non-fiction books to which I expect to return. In this case, I have read (or re-read) the first five plus five more selected at random. There are about a dozen more that I read as a child.


Earlier Poirots: Austin Trevor, Peter Ustinov, Albert Finney

This splendidly-priced collection contains stories first published as magazine pieces between 1923 and 1940. Christie first introduced her dapper Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in 1920, with her own debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. She bade him farewell with Curtain, her penultimate novel. But though published in 1976, this was written in the 1940s, and most of the later collections of Poirot stories drew from earlier material. So the seventeen-year span in this book essentially covers the working life of the former Belgian policeman from his retirement to England to the time of his final case. Almost all of them have been dramatized in the BBC series Agatha Christie's Poirot, together with several of the full-length novels, starring the incomparable David Suchet.

David Suchet, the Poirot of the short stories on BBC

I remember enjoying the story collections as as a young reader. Christie's ingenuity is unmatched, not only in devising original twists but also in developing variations on a theme as she did in her collection The Labours of Hercules, all of which are reprinted here. Coming back to them again after the BBC versions, though, I find myself enjoying them much less. It is not that I recall the solutions; none of the stories have stuck in the memory like the best of the novels. It is more a matter of pacing. As compared to weekly television episodes of sufficient length to fill out the social milieu of each mystery, the mostly terse stories, read even two of three at a time, seem more like a diet of canapés that make you long to sit down for a leisurely meal. They contain enough to intrigue, albeit briefly, but not enough to satisfy.

"Fact!" said General Forbes. "Heard it from old Bassington-ffrench. And he got it from old Badger Cotterill who's got it from Snooks Parker."

Miss Henderson nodded brightly. "That does seem to settle it!" she said.

This tiny scrap of dialogue, from "Problem at Sea," says a lot about Christie's world, and also her understated sense of humor. For Hercule Poirot is a society detective, and almost all his cases involve members of the upper crust, bound by wealth and birth, schools, regiments, or clubs, attending the same house parties and social events, and with a fair sprinkling of vapid young things with nothing to do except play tennis and flirt. Even when Poirot's clients come from outside this circle, they are always at the top of their game: a middle-European prince, the ballet dancer who has taken London by storm, an American billionaire, a star of the silver screen. The brilliance of the BBC producers was to realize what scope this gives for production design, shot after shot of Art Deco style and interwar luxury, filled out with those British character actors who can make so much of tiny roles. But on the page, the supporting roles remain tiny, and the color and luxury is left to the imagination. This is not the case with a full-length novel, where even a minor character can be given depth, and we can immerse ourselves in an environment rather than dipping into it and moving on.

Mystery stories place a high premium on exposition; you need to know the facts of a case before you can solve it. Christie is skilled at this, but her skill is almost always obvious. There is generally some character who comes in early on and fills Poirot (and the reader) in on the facts. Sometimes the details are so compressed that they are difficult to remember, especially if this is the second or third story you have read that day. I found myself most interested in those stories such as "Triangle at Rhodes" or "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" which do not begin with a case at all, merely Poirot's suspicion that a crime is in the offing, because then the exposition, development, and resolution can proceed as a unified, organic whole.

Where Christie most truly shines is in her solutions, whose variety can be mind-boggling: the policeman did it, the narrator did it, they all did it, nobody did it, an apparent victim did it, and of course the butler did it. But these are in the novels, which typically develop multiple characters at such length that you can suspect and then exonerate several different people in turn. As Poirot is fond of reminding us, the important evidence is not the footprint or the cigar ash but "the psychologie, mon ami." But the short story length (here typically 12–15 pages) is not sufficient for us to weigh up many characters at much depth; they tend to come over as stereotypes of their period and class. So instead of working out the solutions for ourselves, we start thinking how Poirot would work them out. Knowing Christie, knowing her detective, we do not approach each case from commonsense principles, but look for the twists from the outset. Being Christie, we usually guess wrong even so. But it is a curiously unsatisfactory way to approach a mystery.

[Tinquerbelle]

From "Poirot Investigates"
1) The Adventure of "The Western Star"
2) The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor
3) The Adventure of the Cheap Flat
4) The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge
5) The Million Dollar Bond Robbery
6) The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb
7) The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan
8) The Kidnapped Prime Minister
9) The Disappearance of Dr. Davenheim
10) The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman
11) The Case of the Missing Will
12) The Veiled Lady
13) The Lost Mine
14) The Chocolate Box

From "Dead Man's Mirror"
15) Dead Man's Mirror
16) The Incredible Theft
17) Murder in the Mews
18) Triangle at Rhodes

From "The Regatta Mystery"
19) The Mystery of the Bagdad Chest
20) How Does Your Garden Grow?
21) Yellow Iris
22) The Dream
23) Problem at Sea

From "The Labours of Hercules"
24) The Nemean Lion
25) The Lernean Hydra
26) The Arcadian Deer
27) The Erymanthian Boar
28) The Augean Stables
29) The Stymphalean Birds
30) The Cretan Bull
31) The Horse of Diomedes
32) The Girdle of Hyppolita
33) The Flock of Geryon
34) The Apples of the Hesperides
35) The Capture of Cerberus

From "Three Blind Mice"
36) The Third-Floor Flat
37) The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly
38) Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds

From "The Under Dog"
39) The Under Dog
40) The Plymouth Express
41) The Affair at the Victory Ball
42) The Market Basing Mystery
43) The Lemesurier Inheritance
44) The Cornish Mystery
45) The King of CLubs
46) The Adventure of the Clapham Cook

From "Double Sin"
47) Double Sin
48) Wasps' Nest
49) The Theft of the Royal Ruby
50) The Double Clue

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Containing all the Poirot stories in one place, this is an absolute treasure for any Christie fan. It also contains the chronology of the stories, and information on the multiple versions of the same story.

[Shreyas Deshpande · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's Agatha Christie! it's hard to hate any of her stories when it's simple delight either to get me off reading slump or serve as light entertainment during difficult days. Got to love her Poirot; these stories are short and sweet.

Ratings:-⭐⭐⭐⭐

[Steve R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Different from all the other Agatha works I have read recently in being a touch over eight hundred pages in length and including stories which I’d read before, I found this collection of fifty-one stories a thorough delight to read. I purposely read it much more slowly than I would otherwise, just to savour the pleasures of her intricate plot construction and character delineation. I also took notes on exactly what it was she actually said about her famous detective. The following represent my efforts to encapsulate Christie’s vision of Hercule Poirot.

Personal background:
- former chief of the Belgian police force
- acquainted with Hastings in Belgium before the war
- wounded on the Somme, invalided out of duty in World War I
- Ffom the very first stories (1923), seems to be old: refers to himself as ‘Papa Poirot’
- had a brother, Achille, who did not live long
- wants to cultivate tasty marrows during his retirement

Attitudes to England:
- Englishman ‘as linguists are deplorable’
- finds English provincial beds ‘a thing of horror’
- ‘The English are very stupid. They think that they can deceive anyone but that no one can deceive them. Because they are brave, but stupid, sometimes they die when they need not have.’

Character:
- at times, quite self-effacing: ‘I am not of an ardent temperament. It has saved me from many embarrassments’
- quite class conscious: ‘Poirot does not hunt down tramps’; reviews prospective clients by consulting Who’s Who to see their specific ranking in the aristocracy;
- when misdirecting is careful that ‘the lies I invent are always the most delicate’
- quite considerate and kind, or ‘As good as a woman in aiding females to recover from shock’.
- a good Catholic
- parsimonious: ‘We Belgians believe in thrift’; however, a generous tipper
- believes in the power of superstition, or at least in its power to influence the actions of others
- can be quite impatient
- ‘I am very strong on family life’
- 'his elderly soul revolted from the stress and hurry of the modern world'
- seems always to have been old: ‘I have reached the age of reflection’
- taste in art more bourgeois than opulent or flamboyant

Pride:
- excessively vain about his accomplishments: ‘All cannot be as Hercule Poirot. I know it well. When one is unique, one knows it.’ Hastings: ‘You’re so confoundedly conceited’; admits to having made ‘innumerable’ failures; feels he is well known and strongly feared by the criminal classes; ‘to be made a fuss of and treated as a lion suited him down to the ground’
- can berate himself excessively when having erred in judgment: ‘I have been thirty-six times an imbecile!’
- he doesn’t like Alice Cunningham since she is not impressed with him
- expects his name to be instantly recognized upon its being announced at a gathering
- ‘there is no question of failure: Hercule Poirot does not fail’

And Women:
- a steadfast bachelor: when flirted with by an attractive maid, replies: ‘I am of advanced years. What have I to do with such frivolities?’
- states that he once loved a young English girl who, unfortunately, could not cook
- fascinated by ‘Countess’ Vera Rassokoff: ‘it is the misfortune of small precise men to hanker after large and flamboyant women: the little bourgeois was still thrilled by the aristocrat’; Miss Lemon suspects he is in love with her after he blushes when she discovers he sent Vera red roses
- ‘women are a miraculous sex’
- after initially refusing due to age, does agree to dance with a professional dancer

Sartorial Customs
- a ‘dandified’ appearance; a ‘resplendent’ dressing gown, embroidered slippers
- his ‘faultless evening clothes, exact symmetry of his hair parting, the exquisite set of his white tie, the sheen of pomade on his hair, and the tortured splendour of his moustaches – all combined to paint the perfect picture of an inveterate dandy’.
- wears fine patent leather shoes when stout hiking brogues would be preferable
- he ‘was quite modest in his estimation of his personal attractions’
- feels that ‘to present a good appearance … is even more important when one has few natural advantages’

Characteristic Behaviours:
- always amiable, excessively polite, continually not wishing to ‘derange’ or ‘discommode’ others
- a green light comes not his eyes when he perceives a previously unknown truth
- quite a hypochondriac: ‘my feet are damp and I have sneezed twice’; when down with flu, muffles his head in a woollen shawl, sips ‘noxious’ tisanes, prefers travelling by train than by bus since the latter ‘have an overabundance of air’; has several medicine bottles, of course arranged by height
- often quite anxious about the weather; not a good traveller; initially refuses to leave London in the winter for fear of the cold; finds that excessive heat makes his moustaches go limp
- suffers from acute mal de mer, even on the short crossing of the Channel, attests to the efficacy of Laverguier’s technique of bending and breathing to deal with it
- his disgusted expression ‘Tchah’ sounds like a cat’s sneeze
- smokes tiny cigarettes

Gastronomical tendencies:
- prefers thick, sweet chocolate, or sirop to ‘your English poison’ (tea)
- rates culinary activities with a high regard: ‘in this country, you treat the affairs gastronomic with a criminal indifference’
- feels that ‘the stomach must not be ignored’
- likes sirop de cassis, made from black currants

Habitual possessions:
- a pocketbook, for entering notes
- a ‘large turnip of a watch’, later replaced by a ‘neat wristwatch’
- a small clothes brush
- a small mirror and small comb, with which to straighten his moustaches

Personal predilections
- love of ‘order and method’
- obsession with symmetry: demands his boiled eggs be of identical sizes; books on his shelves are arranged by size; when ill, medicine bottles arranged by height; his bank account holds 444 pounds, 4 shillings and 4 pence; prefers the electric bars of a radiator to a coal fire since the latter lacks symmetry
- his flat is ‘modern, square, chromium furnished’
- known to flick imaginary pieces of dust from his clothing

Physical appearance:
- egg-shaped head
- dapper appearance, excessively neat
- regards his moustache as ‘a thing of beauty’
- wears a nightcap at bedtime

Professional practices:
- quite taciturn: ‘I think of no one in particular until I am sure’ regarding his lack of willingness to name suspects until he is absolutely sure of their guilt
- usually as self-deprecating as he is totally lacking in humility: often lets Japp and/or other police officials take credit for crimes he has solved
- regards clues as having relatively minor importance in crime solving since ‘at most, one or two may be valid’ while thinking is much more important, ‘since the senses deceive you’
- feels himself to be a ‘consulting specialist’ and proves such by solving a crime simply by being provided with the evidence while never leaving his apartment or by sending Hastings to the scene while he stays in bed with the flu; states that one should ‘never do anything that others can do for you’
- is pleased when a case is ‘most obscure’ since this improves chances of its being solved: if everything seems simple, it ,means the criminal worked hard to obscure the true nature of events
- although hesitant to employ any ‘rough stuff’ can act when required: housebreaking, sticking a foot in a door to prevent its closing, jimmying locks
- berates himself when a client who felt they were threatened is indeed murdered
- believes it is essential that that a good detective must be a psychologist
- disappointed if a case appears too easy since this often indicates the criminal has adroitly arranged circumstances to hide the truth
- at times, can engage in physical feats in the pursuit of criminals; has learned the art of picking pockets
- takes his job seriously: ‘I do not approve of murder’

Mangling of expressions
- ‘the fur would jump about’
- ‘you are barking up the mistaken tree’
- the ‘wind rises’ in one upset about something [not: gets the wind up]
- ‘the dripping will be in the fire’
- ‘obvious, my dear Watson’

If it was possible to feel guilty about enjoying a literary indulgence to too extensive a degree, this work would do it.

Highly recommended, especially for the well-seasoned Agatha reader.

[Vicky Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Grand Adventure Well Underway: Through Agatha's World

I've dabbled here and there over the years, dipping into the mysteries of Agatha Christie a few at a time. Since this year is one hundred years since Agatha's Grand 1922 Adventure around the world, I want to visit as much of her work as possible. That will take some doing, since she is the best selling novelist of all time. Besides her 66 detective novels, she wrote 14 collections of short stories, all of which have been translated more than any other author in the world. This book has over 50 of those short stories and is a fascinating collection!

"There is nothing so intangible, so difficult to pin down, as the source of a rumour."

This set consists of all the short mysteries solved by her character Hercule Poirot. It includes such longer short stories as The Under Dog and Dead Man's Mirror (both of which I loved), quaint gems like Murder in the Mews and Yellow Iris, and even a series of short stories based on the 12 Labors of Hercules, where Hercule Poirot takes cases themed around each of the classic Greek mythical tasks of Hercules. In classic Agatha fashion, the conclusion often has a twist of justice. This collection is well worth reading and re-reading. I enjoyed it on Kindle whisper-sync. I recommend this for anyone who enjoys mysteries.

"Doubtless le bon Dieu knows what he does. But it is odd that he should have permitted himself to fashion certain human beings."

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A treat for Christie fans! For those who don't care for her writing, the foibles of Hercule Poirot may grate on the nerves as they are more pronounced in these short stories than they were in her full-length novels.

Despite the fact that I hadn't read many of the stories before, I was familiar with them from my repeated viewing of David Suchet in "Poirot" on PBS. In fact, so familiar was I with the TV adaptations that I noticed all the variations from their plots when reading these originals!

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the last gifts from my father, and I cherish this tome to this day. It’s Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie — a treasure trove that gathers every single one of Poirot’s short-form adventures into one hefty volume.

For a Christie lover, it’s not just a book; it’s like having the detective himself on your bookshelf, complete with his razor-sharp mind, impeccable moustache, and fondness for order and symmetry.

Inside, there are more than fifty mysteries, from early gems like The Affair at the Victory Ball and The Plymouth Express to atmospheric favourites such as Murder in the Mews. It also contains the entire Labours of Hercules cycle — each “labour” a puzzle as cunningly set as any myth, including The Nemean Lion, The Lernean Hydra, and The Arcadian Deer.

What makes this volume special is not only its completeness but the way it lets you watch Poirot — and Christie’s craft — evolve over the decades.

Some stories sparkle with festive charm (The Theft of the Royal Ruby), others with sly humour (Four and Twenty Blackbirds), and many with endings so sharp they’ll catch you off guard even if you think you know Poirot’s methods.

The editions vary: the HarperCollins paperback (approximately 928 pages) is widely available in India for ₹600–700, while the digital versions on Apple Books or Google Books extend to about 1,360 pages due to formatting. The only quibble readers often have is the font size in print — unsurprising for a book that packs in so much mystery.

Whether you read it curled up in an armchair or in quick bursts on a commute, this anthology is an all-seasons companion — a compendium of clever crimes and elegant solutions that never go stale.

For me, it’s more than a must-have Christie collection; it’s a bridge back to the memory of my father, and the joy of stories we both loved.

[Nishant Bhagat · Rating 5 out of 5]

One cannot review classics honestly, especially when they have attained a cult status. I am a very late reader of The Queen of crime. For a lifetime fan of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot felt initially like a 'me too' character but soon enough starts growing on you. The clever references to Sherlock make you smile always. This is surely a collection of stories to be handed over from one generation to another! Must read for everyone

[Muhammad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always been a fan of detective stories and like thousands of other people, my childhood hero was Sherlock Holmes (I think deep down, he still is my hero!). This Hercule Poirot collection was the first time I tried Poirot and I LIKED him! Hercule Poirot is an eccentric old man with such a passion towards order and rational thoughts and he has such a nice sense of humour! This fat book has 51 stories and it took me quite a long time to finish it. I would say about 26-27 stories were really good. Sad that the rest of the stories were based on the similar plots and were repetitive. Otherwise, I would have gone for a '5 Stars'. The name 'Hercule' is derived from 'Hercules'/ 'Heracles', the demigod in Greek mythology. Christie wanted to see her detective mentally as strong as Hercules physically was. Thus comes the name. Like the Greek demigod, Hercule Poirot also did 12 'grand labours' and the stories are named after the 'Labours of Hercules'. The idea is a great one, no doubt but not all the 'labours' are 'great' equally. I'd like to mention some of my favorite stories form this collection like 'Cornish Mystery', 'The Incredible Theft', 'Under Dog', 'The Capture of Cerberus' etc. One other thing I must say. Agatha Christie was a very good observer of her time. She incorporated love, murder, poison, lust, cocaine, kidnap and what not in her stories. Also her writings are very spontaneous. Like I said, she was very smart lady. So, Holmes or Poirot? I think I won't go for a comparison between these two. They both are great detectives in their own style. They both use the 'rationalization' technique. While Holmes is a reckless one, Poirot is very 'reserved'. Solving a problem sitting in his armchair, that's more like Poirot. I enjoyed the read thoroughly. Viva La Poirot!

[F.H · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Who are you, anyway?”
As though confessing to royal birth the little man said modestly:
“I am Hercule Poirot."

I thought very hard on how I should write this review. You see, I am an avid fan of Poirot and I wanted to write this like a true fangirl should; but also, I need to write seriously to tell the world once again how AMAZING and MAGNIFICENT Poirot is. So, I'll make a compromise. I'll write my fangirl review, but I’ll also write about the important things that I loved about this beautiful piece of writing.

Plus, let's be honest, how can I not be a fangirl when Poirot himself says:

"‘I have a little paragraph to myself in Society Gossip. But yes! Here it is: "‘Go it—criminals—all out! Hercule Poirot—and believe me, girls, he’s some Hercules!—our own pet society detective can’t get a grip on you. ’Cause why? ’Cause he’s got la grippe himself!’"

What I loved about this book:

1- Poirot can be super funny while he is not even trying to be one.
Here are some quotes that made me chuckle:

"I just managed to gasp out ‘Murder!’ and then everything went black—”
“Thank you, mademoiselle. It must have been a great shock to your nervous system."

“You make fun of Papa Poirot, is it not so?” He shook his finger at me. “You do not trust his grey cells?"

"It’s a hard nut to crack.”
“Oh, as far as that goes, I am very good at cracking the nuts! A veritable squirrel!"

“You arouse my gastronomic juices, Madame.”

"Trefusis is as mild as milk—drinks milk, too, I believe." (Ok, Poirot didn't say this one, but it was so funny anyway.)

2- Chocolate box.
I think this story is amazing. How Poirot admits that he also makes mistakes. It makes him more real. We all fail sometimes in life.

3- I liked the fact that inspector Japp, Hastings, and Poirot went on holiday together.
I wish I could see Poirot and Miss Marple in a case together, but I think that would be wishful thinking.

4- It's been foreshadowed multiple times that Poirot will commit a crime throughout multiple stories. Honestly, Agatha Christie is truly a once in a century genius.

“My dear Japp, if I committed a murder you would not have the least chance of seeing—how I set about it! You would not even be aware, probably, that a murder had been committed.”

5- Poirot likes hot chocolate. A true man. Indeed, anyone who likes hot chocolate must be worshipped.

6- George, Poirot's valet, is the opposite of Hastings, and Poirot tries so hard to impress the guy, but dude is so tired he doesn't give a flying fuck.

“You have such enthusiasm, my good George, you do not even ask what I propose to do.”

7- As the stories go on and Poirot gets older, I can clearly see that he is done with his clients' bullshit and is getting more and more impatient and arrogant towards them. Mate, I feel you. I feel you to the core.

8- Poirot is mood itself:
"I am like a cat, I sit by the fire and keep myself warm."

9- Poirot's MAGNIFICENT MOUSTACHE. How can I not RESPECT this guy when he says:

"Shall I say that he interested me because he was trying to grow a moustache and as yet the result is poor.” Poirot stroked his own magnificent moustache tenderly. “It is an art,” he murmured, “the growing of the moustache! I have sympathy for all who attempt it.”

10- Lady Chevenix-Gore.
Here is the thing: I never dreamt that I would meet a character that can frustrate even the great Hercule Poirot. But here it is, Lady Chevenix-Gore, and oh my man, she IS funny.

“I am a reincarnation of Hatshepsut, you know.”
Lady Chevenix-Gore made this announcement in a calm voice.
“Before that,” she went on, “I was a Priestess in Atlantis.”

11- Poirot's dreams are cute. Why is this man so cute? I don't know. I just know he is.

"After the dream he had had last night. He had been leaving Buckingham Palace after being personally thanked when his valet had come in with his morning chocolate!"

12- Poirot has a brother and his name is Achilles.
“Thinking of an imaginary conversation. Your mother and the late Mrs. Holmes, sitting sewing little garments or knitting: ‘Achille, Hercule, Sherlock, Mycroft. . . .’ ”
(Agatha Christie had an amazing sense of humour. When I see her, I'm gonna go and hug her and give her a thousand, a million kisses and hugs).

What I didn't like about this book:

Funny question you ask, how can I not like something about Poirot, but here are a few (that I actually liked but I'm pretending that I didn't):

1- How dare anyone call my beautiful Poirot an ogre and a monster!!!
(Not gonna lie, I laughed so hard here):
"He came to me, the tears in his eyes. ‘I will save you,’ I said. ‘I will go to this man—this ogre, this monster! Leave it to Vera.’ Now it is settled, I go."

Of course, Poirot says this about the woman who talks about him like this:
“A remarkable woman. I have a feeling, my friend—a very decided feeling—I shall meet her again. Where, I wonder?”

Well, will he actually meet Countess Rossakoff again?

The answer is yes. And boys and girls, I must admit I was quite shocked when they met again:
"But Fate itself is not more inexorable than the behaviour of two escalators moving in an inverse direction. Steadily, remorselessly, Hercule Poirot was borne upward, and the Countess Vera Rossakoff was borne downwards."

Well, what do you know?! Poirot, My Poirot mind you, has fallen for this woman!!!! How can this be?!

"As the hue of red roses, so were the cheeks of Hercule Poirot. He blushed, blushed to the eyeballs."

Haha! Never! Poirot is mine and mine alone.

2- "Though Hercule Poirot was a conceited little man where his profession was concerned, he was quite modest in his estimation of his personal attractions."

Excuse me??? He is extremely handsome. Do not try to say otherwise, or I shall commit a murder.

“What I understand you to mean is, that in physical appearance I do not resemble a Hercules?”

No love, no detective will ever be as handsome as you. Luckily, Poirot is super smart and he figures this out himself:

"Take this Hercules—this hero! Hero, indeed! What was he but a large muscular creature of low intelligence and criminal tendencies!"

Yes! Yes mon ami. That is true:

"Here, then, was a modern Hercules—very distinct from that unpleasant sketch of a naked figure with bulging muscles, brandishing a club."

Believe me, a single gray cell of yours is a 1000 times better than all the muscles Hercules had.


Rating?

Why are you even asking?

100/5 stars.

[Antonio Rosato · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non avendo mai letto niente su Hercule Poirot ho preferito comprare questo libro che contiene quasi tutte le opere di Agatha Christie dedicate al celebre investigatore belga. Ebbene, devo dire che all'inizio sono stato quasi rapito e coinvolto dalle varie indagini e peripezie dei due protagonisti (Poirot ed il suo fido amico Hastings); in seguito, però, i racconti mi son sembrati un po' tutti uguali (cambiava la location ed i personaggi ma la trama era sempre la stessa). Penso, comunque, che possa anche essere colpa mia che ho letto il libro in un colpo solo…
[https://lastanzadiantonio.blogspot.co...]

[lise.charmel · Rating 4 out of 5]

La raccolta DEFINITIVA per gli amanti di Poirot e dei racconti. Sono talmente tanti che a volte le situazioni si ripetono un po', ma è sempre un piacere.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

1. The Affair at the Victory Ball - 4 Stars
2. The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan - 5 Stars
3.  The King of Clubs - 5 Stars
4. The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim - 5 Stars
5. The Plymouth Express - 5+ Stars
6. The Adventure of “The Western Star - 4 Stars
7. The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor 3.5 Stars
8. The Kidnapped Prime Minister - 5 Stars
9. The Million Dollar Bond Robbery - 4 Stars
10. The Adventure of the Cheap Flat - 3 Stars
11.  The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge - 4 Stars
12. The Chocolate Box - 5 Stars
13. The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb - 5 Stars
14. The Veiled Lady - 4 Stars
15. The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly - 4 Stars
16  The Market Basing Mystery - 5 Stars
17. The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman - 5 Stars
18. The Case of the Missing Will - 4 Stars
19. The Incredible Theft - 5 Stars
20. The Adventure of the Clapham Cook -3 Stars
21. The Lost Mine - 4 Stars
22. The Cornish Mystery - 4 Stars
23. The Double Clue - 5 Stars
24. The Theft of the Royal Ruby - 5 Stars
25. The Lemesurier Inheritance - 5 Stars
26. The Under Dog - 5 Stars
27. Double Sin - 4 Stars
28. Wasps’ Nest - 5 Stars
29. The Third Floor Flat - 5 Stars
30. The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest - 5 Stars
31.  Dead Man’s Mirror - 5+ Stars
32.  How Does Your Garden Grow? - 4 Stars
33.  Problem at Sea - 4 Stars
34.  Triangle at Rhodes - 4.5 Stars
35.  Murder in the Mews - 5 Stars
36.  Yellow Iris - 5 Stars
37.  The Dream - 4 Stars
38.  The Labors of Hercules - 4 Stars
39.  The Nemean Lion - 4 Stars
40.  The Lernean Hydra - 5 Stars
41  The Arcadian Deer - 4 Stars
42  The Erymanthian Boar - 5 Stars
43  The Augean Stables - 5 Stars
44  The Stymphalean Birds - 5 Stars
45  The Cretan Bull - 5 Stars
46  The Horses of Diomedes - 3.5 Stars
47  The Girdle of Hyppolita - 4 Stars
48  The Flock of Geryon - 5 Stars
49  The Apples of the Hesperides - 5 Stars
50  The Capture of Cerberus - 5 Stars
51  Four and Twenty Blackbirds - 4 Stars

[Jack Heath · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars. The ingenuity of Christie jumps out in this collection. References to Greek mythology, political kidnappings, discoveries of Egyptian tombs, corporate shenanigans, and locked door murders, those and more are among the 51. I am not revealing anything when I say that Poirot rises to the occasion each time. That is, he solves the case at hand, although his romantic notions occasionally let a perpetrator off the hook. Indeed, a few have no crime at all. Take "The Arcadian Deer" in which he helps his car mechanic find lost love in Switzerland. Any list of great old-fashioned Poirot mysteries would include "The Girdle of Hyppolita" with Poirot resolving the disappearance of a 15-year-old schoolgirl from the train to Paris. In another highlight, Poirot knowingly abandons his little grey cell persona for the more familiar, as far as the public is concerned, police detective who is out to overturn stones searching for evidence. It's "The Under Dog," and he's trying to annoy someone into a mistake. They're not all that good but collectively, 4 Stars. PS: I review each of them individually elsewhere on Goodreads. (May 2021)

[Tammy · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED everything about this offering. Short stories are especially nice when you are reading more than one book at a time. It just doesn't get better than Hercule Poirot! The writing, suspense, humor and the deduction (which I seem to always get wrong) are nothing less than brilliant. Thanks again to the great AC … Highly recommend!

[Kailey (Luminous Libro) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of fifty short stories with Hercule Poirot is wonderful! Poirot is one of my favorite fictional detectives, and it's so fun to see all these mysteries being solved very quickly in just a few pages. I love the longer Poirot novels as well, but I enjoyed reading these short stories because I could quickly finish each one within a few minutes when I had little time to read.

This full collection includes stories that have previously been published in other short story collections, like Poirot Investigates, Dead Man's Mirror, The Regatta Mystery, The Labors of Hercules, Three Blind Mice, The Under Dog, and Double Sin.

How Does Your Garden Grow? has always been a favorite of mine, as well as The Kidnapped Prime Minister. But there are just too many good ones to choose from! The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest is another favorite one.

I've really enjoyed taking my time through this book and reading a story here and there, a little at a time for months, whenever I needed a little reading treat!

[Brian Poole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hercule Poirot is justifiably Agatha Christie’s most famous creation.

Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories is a comprehensive chronicle of the detective’s life in short fiction. While the numerous Poirot novels are among Christie’s best and popular works, the character excelled in the short format, offering a distillation of what makes him great in concise bites.

Published from the 1920s through the 1940s, the tales in The Complete Short Stories present a full portrait of the Belgian police inspector enjoying a retirement career as a celebrity crime stopper in London. Poirot’s character emerges quite distinctly. His precision, fastidious attention to his appearance, obsession with neatness and order and fetishistic care of his prominent moustaches are constants. He’s always the smartest person in the room, able to wring meaning from nuanced observation of a scene’s minutiae. Though he’s sometimes shown to disdain pedestrian acts such as looking for cigarette ash or loose threads, often Poirot’s notice of such trivialities proved to be key to a case’s resolution.

Over the course of these stories, Poirot encounters any number of thieves, murderers, swindlers, cons, conspirators, saboteurs and thugs. The British gentry fall victim to any number of murderous devices, including several exotic poisonings and more than one attempt to pass a murder off as a locked room suicide. Poirot foils any number of clever theft schemes. Some cases aren’t even mysteries, per se, but more general crime fiction, allowing Poirot to use his considerable mental gifts to thwart more subtle criminal schemes.

Poirot is all about method. He extols the virtue of an “orderly mind” and uses “the little grey cells” to make logical deductions of a scene’s details. Christie doesn’t shy away from the inevitable Sherlock Holmes comparisons, either. Indeed, more than one story addresses the comparison to Arthur Conan Doyle’s very similar creation head-on. It was somewhat gutsy, but then, no one ever accused Christie of lacking ambition.

While Poirot’s novel-length adventures provide complex, multi-layered plots with large casts, his short fiction appearances are admirably economical. Christie packed a lot of detail into a very few pages and a character like Poirot, with a well-known and colorful persona, can have major impact in a story without significant exposition regarding his character. With a few well-placed sentences, Christie imparted all a reader needed to know about Poirot to grasp his essence and could then move on to lean, well-crafted problems that Poirot could dispatch without needing novel-length exploration.

Included in the collection is a series called “The Labours of Hercules.” These are a series of twelve shorts, where Poirot selected a case thematically inspired by one of the famous adventures of his mythological namesake. They alone provide a strong cross-section of the diversity of Poirot’s adventures, boasting everything from a straight murder mystery to a political scandal. And as always, Christie embroidered these stories with well-placed twists that weren’t obvious but made perfect sense.

Other notable adventures include the disappearance of valuable bonds from a trans-Atlantic ship; a banker who seemed to disappear while on a short walk; a sailor who discovers a body in a train compartment; the theft of a movie star’s famous jewels; and a plot to kidnap the British prime minister. Other adventures included a country Christmas visit in search of a foreign royal’s stolen necklace; several mysterious deaths seemingly connected to the curse of an opened Egyptian tomb; a hidden will designed to test the ingenuity of the beneficiary; and a murder at a costume party.

In addition to the colorful rogues and hapless victims populating these stories, Poirot was accompanied by a number of recurring characters. The stories from the ‘20s tended to be narrated by Captain John Hastings, Poirot’s ex-military friend and confederate. Hastings was a “true blue” Brit, easily swayed by patriotism, awe of the nobility and a pretty face. While not a dullard, Poirot often treated him as though he were a slow child or favored pet. Hastings so frequently expressed jealousy or malicious glee at the possibility of Poirot being wrong, it was a wonder the friendship endured. A constant throughout the adventures was Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard. Japp was shown as smart and tenacious, and always happy and willing to accept Poirot’s assistance. After Hastings’s exit from the stories, Poirot was sometimes seen with George, his faithful, capable valet, and Miss Lemon, his prim, efficient secretary.

Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories isn’t a brief affair. It clocks in at close to 900 pages in trade paperback, so it’s not necessarily the best starting point for casual fans or newcomers. For Poirot die-hards, however, it’s an essential volume containing all of the character’s shorts and novellas.

This review originally appeared on www.thunderalleybcp.com

[hotsake (André Troesch) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not the biggest Agatha Christie fan, but I am a big fan of David Suchet's Poirot. That being said, I enjoyed this collection of short stories, and as of now, I prefer the short stories to the full-length novels.

4.5/5

[Alisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tend to agree with Agatha Christie herself when she said that Poirot is at his best in a full-length novel, although Miss Marple shines in a short story. This giant collection ranges from forgettable (as in, I had literally read some of them before and forgot) to intriguing. My favorite stories are the Labors of Hercules ones, which form their own standalone book anyway.
There's far too much Hastings in this collection-- my chief objection to him is that he nearly always assumes that Poirot is an idiot, when long experience at some point should tell him otherwise. By way of contrast, Dr. Watson may not ever understand Sherlock's angle of investigation but at some point he just learned to trust it. Hastings never really does that, and it gets annoying and boring pretty quick.

[Dhiraj Sharma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Along with the novels of Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie also wrote several short stories of HP which appear as complilations in several books.

This compendium makes your search for short stories much easier.

I bought this book from a book store in Park Street when I was on tour to Kolkara..Oxford it was if I remember correctly.

Read these stories in case you don't have much time to spare each day to read a full length novel, read these even if you have ample time at your hands.

Let me assure you that the thrill, suspense and excitement of these short stories is no way short by any means from the full blown novels of Monsieur Poirot.

[Whistler's Mom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really "complete" but close.

In the first half of the 20th century, a talented, hard-working writer could make a good living by regularly selling short stories to magazines. But (with the notable exception of Dorothy Parker) fame derived from books, not short stories.

Agatha Christie started publishing books in 1920 and she sold well for an obscure author. Her first books earned her little money, their main financial value to her being the introduction of the character of Hercule Poirot. Poirot quickly gained a following and The Sketch was happy to buy stories about him. It was much quicker and more lucrative than writing book-length mysteries, although she continued to do both.

Eventually, her production of short stories dwindled due to her books becoming more profitable, the demands of family and social life, and (during and after WWII) her preoccupation with play-writing. It's important to note that 23 of these 51 stories were published in 1922 or 1923. Omitted are twelve Poirot stories published in 1924 and later merged into the book The Big Four. If the book is any indication, that omission is no loss at all.

I think there's a big gap in the quality between the stories written in the first few years of Christie's career and those published in the late 1920's and beyond. By her own admission, she started writing very much under the influence of the Sherlock Holmes/Dr Watson model. The first stories were narrated by Hastings, who plays the boob to Poirot's brilliant detective. When Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard appears, he's even dumber and more irritating than Hastings.

Later, she ditched Hastings and gained the confidence to pair Poirot with intelligent, competent police officers. IMHO, the later stories are much more enjoyable. Unfortunately for short story fans her production slowed in the late 1920's and the 1930's, but the ones that appeared are good. My favorite is "How Does Your Garden Grow" because it shows a thoughtful, kind Poirot and his sympathy for the frailties of human nature.

There are four novellas which were collected in the book "Murder in the Mews" in 1937. Christie actually preferred the novella length for mysteries, but bowed to her publisher's demand for longer books. All four are good, but the weakest is "The Incredible Theft." It was an enlargement of an earlier story ("The Submarine Plans") and involves (shades of Holmes!) highly placed government officials and international intrigue. Christie sometimes used political intrigues as a plot-driver, but not every successfully. She was simply better at domestic crimes.

The highlight of this book is the stories that were later collected in book form as "The Labours of Hercules" in 1947. Christie had little formal education, but classic literature from Ancient Greece and Rome were standard fare when she was young. She cleverly melds those ancient stories with life in post-WWII England to show off both her own erudition and her detective's ingenuity.

All these stories have been printed (and reprinted!) in the numerous collections of Christie's short stories, so there's endless overlap. I found this collection on sale and was happy to buy it. Otherwise, you might be better off purchasing the collections as they go on sale.