We English teachers like to talk about something we call "purpose for reading." Most people read for entertainment, placing a premium on avoiding spoilers because an important part of their experience is being taken by surprise. But another, equally valid reason for reading is to appreciate the craft of the author: the way they use language, the deftness of their characterizations, the way they leverage literary devices, the cleverness of their plots and plot devices.
Can we all agree that Agatha Christie's enduring contribution to the mystery genre is never going to be about her lyrical writing or in-depth characterizations? Her prose style isn't the reason she's lauded as the Founding Mother of Mystery. No - the reason we celebrate Agatha Christie is because of the many cunningly creative genre tropes that she either pioneered or refined: those ingenious plots, those artful misdirections, those wickedly inventive twist endings!
The problem with conventional blurbs and book summaries, however, is that - in order to avoid spoilers - they almost always omit this information. Understandable but also a regrettable, because as one's memory of her works starts to fades, one's appreciation of the scope and range of Christie's genius tends to fade as well.
For this reason, I've decided to craft this recognition and celebration of Christie's oeuvre by focusing on those elements of each novel that best demonstrate the nature of her unique genius. What features make each story unique? What tropes did they introduce? What crafty misdirections did they employ? The resulting summaries are necessarily spoilery, but also much more accurately capture and celebrate Christie's enduring legacy and contributions to the mystery genre.
(Have organized these chronologically rather than alphabetically to better reflect the evolution of Christie's craft over time - and am limiting myself to her Hercule Poirot novels at this time because a review of *all* her published works - 66 detective novels, 15 short story collections - would be overwhelming!)
adventure). The isolated country house, the elderly matriarch killed for her money, the household full of suspects ... you don't even have to consult the cover to suspect you're in a Christie novel. But this is just window dressing for Christie's clever "double jeopardy" plot twist in which the most obvious suspect, Emily Inglethorp's trophy husband Alfred, creates a "double fake" - devising evidence that will make it look like he's guilty, but also creating enough doubt (evidence implicating a handy backup suspect) to ensure he'll be exonerated at trial. Oh, and there's a bit where Alfred uses a chemical precipitate to ensure the poison, strychnine, crystalizes at the bottom of Emily's sleeping draught, rendering the rest of the potion deceptively safe - which is so clever, it probably deserves to be the MC of a separate mystery. This is, of course, Christie's first iteration of Poirot, and it's his OCD that leads to the solution, when the detective realizes that a vase he previously straightened is now out of place because it's been used to conceal a critical clue. In other words, OCD isn't just a character quirk, but a necessary plot device. One wonders: did Christie come to regret being harnessed to an OCD detective for the next three decades?
Murder on the Links (Hercule Poirot's 2nd adventure). Paul Renauld is dead, but don't spend too much time feeling bad for him because eventually we find out he committed a murder 20yrs ago, and his neighbor has been blackmailing him on the strength of it. Renauld's desperate solution: stage his own death. Handily, Renauld stumbles upon a tramp who has died from natural causes, so he doesn't even have to kill anyone: all he has to do is dress the tramp in his clothes, plunge a knife into the tramp's heart (because who suspects death from natural causes when a body turns up with a knife in its heart?), bludgeon the tramp's face with a pipe to prevent recognition, have his wife (complicit in the plan) swear that he was abducted by mysterious men shortly before his murder, and then disappear. Things go awry, however, when the aspiring fiancé of Renauld's son, who also happens to be the daughter of his blackmailer, decides to kill him for real because, you know, why settle for golden eggs when you can inherit the goose? And just when you're thinking "a murder hidden inside another murder" is wicked clever, Christie adds *another* layer - a woman who, fearing her sister may be the murderer, deliberately creates even more obfuscation. This one's a delightful confusion of conflicting clues truly worthy of a master detective.
Poirot Investigates (Hercule Poirot's 3rd adventure). This is a collection of Poirot stories, some definitely more clever than others. What's interesting, I think, is how many plot elements Christie introduces here that pop up again (and again) in her later writings.
The Adventure of the Western Star. Poirot figures out the the heist of a famous diamond, supposedly by a mysterious Chinese villain straight out of pulp fiction, was actually orchestrated by a blackmailer intent on preventing the revelation that the stolen gem was, in fact, a paste copy. If I had a nickel for every mystery plot that involved a genuine gem being replaced by a fake, I'd be a millionaire.
The Tragedy at Marsden Manor. A word association exercise (even this early in her career, we see Christie evincing a fascination for psychology) reveals the secret of how and why Mr. Maltravers had to die (shot in the mouth with a small caliber gun - a cunningly invisible method of murder), but how to get Mrs. Maltravers to confess? Poirot's solution: an accusatory ghost and fake blood on the hand of the guilty party - all very melodramatic and Hamlet-y!
The Adventure of the Cheap Flat. At a dinner party, Mr. and Mrs. Robinson share the story of the queer circumstances surrounding their recent acquisition of a mysteriously inexpensive flat. Poirot, no fool he, recognizes that this has to be too good to be true, and eventually figures out that the whole thing is a ploy by a couple of international spies passing as Robinsons to trick an assassin into killing the wrong people.
The Mystery of the Hunter's Lodge. As anyone remotely familiar Christie's canon will tell you, if a character(s) is identified at any time as a former actor/actress, the mystery will surely hinge upon an impersonation! In this case, the actress is playing a double role as the both a relative of the victim and victim's housekeeper. Because who's going to question that a mysterious bearded stranger was seen in the company of the victim right before he died, if *two* witnesses saw him? Eventually, however, it strikes Poirot as strange that no one has ever seen the wife and the housekeeper at the same time ....
The Million Dollar Bond Robbery. $1M in liberty bonds vanish on their way from London to the U.S., and the young clerk who was supposed to be safeguarding them is blamed. Come to find out, however, the bonds never made it onto the ship, but were purloined in London by a treacherous partner in the firm (Shaw) and replaced with fakes. Then, once in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, Shaw - disguised as an invalid patient who never leaves his cabin - removed the packet of fakes and threw them overboard. Fortunately, Poirot intuits the significance of the fact that Shaw was mysteriously incommunicado (supposedly laid up with bronchitis) during the weeks the ship was at sea.
The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb. In this one, the reprehensible Dr. Ames, having first tricked his buddy Rupert Bleibner into making him his sole heir, subsequently maneuvers his gullible bubby into committing suicide by convincing him that he has contracted leprosy. Then, all he has to do is murder Rupert's wealthy father, blame the whole rash of deaths on an Egyptian curse, and feign shock upon being notified that he's due to inherit the Bleibner wealth. Nasty!
The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan. A pearl necklace has gone missing from its locked box in a hotel room, but the maid only left the room twice, each time absent for only a few seconds. So how was it done? The chambermaid, also in the room, used the first absence to pass the box through a hole in a cupboard to her accomplice in the next room (where he was able to extract the pearls at leisure), then used the second absence to replace the box.
The Kidnapped Prime Minister. The British PM is having a bad day! First, in London, he is waylaid by a gang of ruffians, receiving a wound to his face that has to be bandaged up. Later that same day, in France, he's kidnapped. Understandably, the search for the missing PM is launched in France - until, that is, Poirot figures out that the PM was actually kidnapped during the attack in London, where an imposter then assumed the role of the PM, his identity disguised by those bandages on his face.
The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim. The eponymous Daveheim is the bad guy - a banker who's embezzled a fortune and now needs to make a clean getaway. His plan: arrange to vanish at the same time his avowed enemy is set to call, assume his "secret identity" as the town drunk/petty criminal (assisted by a wig & a false beard) and, finally, get himself arrested - because who's going to suspect the bum in the drunk tank is in fact a vanished gentleman-thief?
The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman. In this one, Poirot rather splendidly reveals that the blackmailer Foscatini wasn't killed by one of his guests at dinner because there were no guests at dinner. Instead, Foscatini was killed by his manservant Graves, who staged the fake dinner party and ate as much of the three meals as he could. Alas for Graves, however, Poirot recognizes the significance of the fact that the side dishes and desserts remained untouched: poor Graves, having stuffed himself on three entres, has no room for more!
The Case of the Missing Will. A wealthy man stipulates that his chosen heir must "prove her wits" in order to inherit his fortune - otherwise, all the money goes to charities. And if that's not hokey enough, the solution turns out to involve a will written in invisible ink. Definitely not one of Christie's most inventive efforts ... and since Poirot's the one who figures out the solution, I remain unconvinced that ingénue Violet technically qualified to inherit her uncle's fortune.
Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Hercule Poirot's 4th adventure). This is the book that established Christie's enduring reputation as the mistress of the twist ending. Manipulating our human tendency to sympathize with first person narrators - especially when they are assuming the familiar role of "detective's sidekick" (a la Dr. Watson, Col. Hastings, Bunny Manders) - she provides Poirot with a quite likeable one, Dr. Sheppard ... and then pulls the rug out from beneath our feet by revealing Sheppard to be the murderer! The ultimate unreliable narrator. The plot isn't that important (a rather pedestrian matter of blackmail), nor is the ruse that Sheppard uses to establish his alibi - using a dictaphone recording of the victim's voice to make it appear Ackroyd was alive long after Sheppard had in fact murdered him - particularly clever. But the denouement in which Christie suddenly reveals to her readers that they've been reading a confession rather than a narrative still hits as brilliant.
Big Four (Hercule Poirot's 5th adventure). I'm exercising my prerogative as the creator of this post to skip this one. Apparently Christie was in a bad place when she wrote this and needed money, so she patched together a bunch of short stories to create this mess of a "spy novel," in which Poirot defeats an international consortium of villains (the "Big Four" of the title- a wealthy American tycoon, a French female scientist, a Chinese Moriarty-esque supercriminal, and an actor/assassin) who want to rule the world. The villains set traps for Poirot, Poirot sets traps for them - lots of recycled spy novel busy-ness, very little cleverness. Unless, of course, we want to give Christie credit for propagating the whole "international consortium of villains" trope? But I feel like comic books probably already had this one covered.
Mystery of the Blue Train (Hercule Poirot's 6th adventure). The victim: wealthy Ruth Kettering, who is found murdered in her train compartment, the precious "Heart of India" ruby that she was travelling with, stolen. The villains: Ruth's maid Ada (actually an actress, skilled at impersonations) and her father's "secretary" Maj. Knighton (actually a notorious jewel thief). Their plan: to mask their involvement by providing themselves with alibis - at the time of the murder, Ada is to appear to have been left behind by her employer in London and Knighton is to appear to have been in Paris. In truth, however, Knighton slips aboard the train to kill Ruth and take the jewels, while his accomplice Ada masquerades as Ruth to conceal the actual time of the murder and theft. But Poirot's bothered by the fact that Ruth's killer took the time to disfigure her face ... why would they do that? Because, he realizes, someone needs to make sure that no one spots that "real Ruth" isn't the "faux Ruth" they've all been interacting with on the journey. Sound familiar? It should, as this trope has since become a genre staple. What I love about this one is how Christie practically shoves the clues in your face but you still don't figure it out until Poirot reveals all, because she's incorporated so many tempting red herrings (a jealous husband, a swindling lover, a vengeful French dancer), it's almost temperamentally impossible not to go chasing off after them.
Peril at End House (Hercule Poirot's 7th adventure). The gimmick of this one is two cousins with the same name, Magdala Buckley. Magdala #1, a retiring sort who goes by the sobriquet Maggie, is having a secret love affair with a wealthy dilatant pilot (Michael Seton). Magdala #2, a party girl who goes by the name of Nick, is in tough financial straights, barely clinging to her beloved End House. Intercepting a call revealing Seton's death in an accident, Nick decides to knock off Maggie and pretend she (Nick) is Seton's lover and heir, using all those love letters addressed to "Magdala" as proof - get it? Then, she muddies the waters by making it appear as though she, Nick, is the murderer's actual target, thus deflecting suspicion away from herself and onto Seton's wanna-be heirs. A fake bullet hole through her hat, making sure Maggie is wearing Nick's wrap when she is murdered (suggesting the murderer mistook her for Nick), a fake poisoning with cocaine-laced chocolates ... after the third attempt, an increasingly worried Poirot suggests Nick "play dead" until he can uncover the culprit. This sets up one of the most entertaining bits in the novel, when the two of them stage a fake seance in which the "ghost" of Nick tricks a couple of shady servants into confessing that they've forged a will leaving Nick's fortune to them - a nice red herring, that. (There's also a bit about one of Nick's party friends distributing cocaine via watches.) But the most effective red herring? Making Nick so likeable! It never occurs to readers that the person Poirot is working so hard to protect is going to end up being the murderer.
Lord Edgeware Dies aka Thirteen to Dinner (Hercule Poirot's 8th adventure). Wealthy socialite Jane Wilkinson needs to get rid of her inconvenient current husband, Lord Edgeware, so that she can marry her true love, the Duke of Merton. Edgewater's actually willing to divorce her: the problem is that Merton's a Catholic, unwilling to attach himself to a divorcee -which means Jane needs to be a widow. Her plan: hire Carlotta Adams, an actress known for doing impressions, to establish that "Jane Wilkinson" was at a dinner party at the same time Lord Edgeware is murdered, then kill Adams. Unfortunately, Poirot begins to suspect something's amiss when, days later, the real Jane appears unfamiliar with a topic that was discussed at the dinner party - suspicions that are then confirmed when he figures out that a torn bit of letter has been altered to change "she" to "he" (an attempt to make it look like a man hired Adams, not a woman), and the inscription on a gold case has been altered. Pretty sure Christie didn't invent the "torn letter" trope, and she's basically reusing the impersonation plot device she employed in Blue Train, so you could argue there's nothing particularly novel here - just that feeling, at the end, that your attention has once again been manipulated by a master.
Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot's 9th adventure). An American passenger on the Orient Express is murdered by stabbing, but the stab wounds are strange: some right handed, some left handed, some deep, some slight. Trapped in an avalanche miles from civilization, Poirot's pool of suspects is limited to his fellow passengers on the train. Unfooled by red herrings suggesting that the murderer may have been disguised as a porter who disembarked after the crime, Poirot gradually realizes that every one of the passengers is linked to a notorious Lindberg-esque child kidnapping and death that happened years ago (a godmother, a family friend, a nanny, a nurse) and correctly deduces that they all had a hand in the murder: the victim, the child's kidnapper/murderer, was drugged, then the passengers took turns exacting their revenge. What's fascinating about this one (besides the gimmick that they all did it, of course) is that Poirot is, for the first time, conflicted over his role in enforcing justice. Is it justice to expose these passengers as murderers because they took justice into their own hands? Especially since there's no way to prove which of the stab wounds actually resulted in death? As police officials finally reach the snow-bound engine, Poirot - a man who has heretofore refused to acknowledge the grey areas between right and wrong, lawfulness and lawlessness - makes the difficult decision not to expose his fellow passengers.
Three Act Tragedy (Hercule Poirot's 10th adventure). The butler did it! The curious issue isn't that Christie found herself unable to resist the temptation ... only that it took 10 books for her to get around to it. Technically, the butler isn't the butler, but an accomplished actor named Cartwright, impersonating a butler long enough to serve a poisoned cocktail to the victim. Because no one ever pays attention to the servants, see? The victim, Dr. Strange is (tragically) one of Cartwright's very best friends - but also the only person left in the world who knows that Cartwright has a wife mouldering away in a lunatic asylum. Cartwright, you see, has his heart set on marrying the fetching young flapper Egg, with whom he is infatuated, which is why Dr. Strange has to go. Tons of red herrings, including a "dress rehearsal" in which a faultless clerical gentleman is slain. Cartwright's depicted as arrogant, narcissistic, and foolish, which removes some of the sting from the fact that this really is a tragedy: one almost feels bad for the vain old man who just wants another chance at love.
Death in the Clouds (Hercule Poirot's 11th adventure). Murder by wasp? Murder by blowpipe? Shady Ms. Gale - travelling on a small plane with passengers that (unluckily for the murder) happen to include Poirot - is, in fact, killed by a poison dart, but not from a blowgun: rather, the dart has been plunged into her neck by fellow passenger, a dentist using his white clinical coat to pose as an air steward. The clue that reveals all? The fact that Mrs. Gale's teacup had two spoons - Poirot figures out that the faux steward used 'delivering a spoon' as a pretense for leaning over Gale to administer the fatal puncture. The inherent problem with all locked room mysteries is that they focus on "how was it done?" rather than "which of these many possible options the correct one?"- which, from a dramatic point of view - creates many fewer opportunities for misdirection. Even a wasp, a blowpipe, and a myriad of motives aren't enough to make this feel like more than an intellectual exercise.
ABC Murders (Hercule Poirot's 12th adventure). Three curiously alliterative murders occur: Alice Ascher, killed in Andover; Betty Bernbard, killed in Bexhill; Sir Carmichael Clarke, killed in Churston. Who but a madman would kill in such a random way? The great Hercule Poirot, however, sees through the deception, realizing that the first two murders were merely staged to draw attention from the last, committed by a suspect so obvious (Carmichael's brother & heir) that deliberately casting suspicion on another was his only hope of disguising his own guilt. Moreover, Carmichael's heir has found the perfect foil, a shell-shocked travelling salesman named Alexander Bonaparte Cust (ABC!) who, due to frequent memory blackouts, is easily gaslighted into believing that he is the murderer. (Indeed, ABC's whole "travelling salesman" job is a fake, organized by the heir for the sole purposes of making sure ABC would be spotted in each location when a murder occurred. Dastardly!) This "murder as distraction" construct is Christie at her most clever, and has since become a mystery genre staple.
Murder in Mesopotamia (Hercule Poirot's 13th adventure). This one whisks us off to Christie's happy place, the archeological wonders of the Middle East. The archeologist in charge of the dig is Dr. Eric Leidner. The victim, his wife Louise, is eliminated by means of the ubiquitous "blow to the head with a blunt object" in her locked bedroom. The motive turns out to be obsessive love: long ago, Mrs. Leidner was briefly married to a ne'er-do-well, insanely jealous chap by the name of Frederick Bosner, subsequently exposed as a spy during the Great War (this would have hit Christie's readers as especially reprehensible) but spared from paying for his crimes by virtue of dying in a train accident - or so everyone assumed. As Poirot eventually intuits, however, Bosner survived the crash and took advantage of the opportunity (and the horrible disfigurement of his facial features in the wreck) to assume the identity of Leidner, locate Louise, woo her, win her all over again ... only to off her when she has the temerity to start falling for another man. The whole locked room thing? Engineered by luring Louise to her window, dropping a big stone quem (look it up) on her head from the roof, retrieving the stone via a rope, and then shutting the window & restaging the scene to hide the truth. Not the most ingenious "locked room" solution, which may be why Christie injects a bit of horror (a terrifying face that appears at Louise's window in the night; the rather horrific death of a witness by acid) and a diverting red herring involving a fake priest who turns out to be a notorious antiquities thief.
Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot's 14th adventure). The solution to this one involves bridge scores and psychology - how's that for a bit of mid-century-modern fabulousness? The victim is the mysterious Mr. Shaitana, an eccentric collector who has "collected" three detectives (Poirot, Inspector Battle, Ariadne Oliver) and four murderers for a bridge party at his place. Unwisely, Shaitana drops hints that he knows the truth behind all the alleged murders; by the end of the night, one of the guests has eliminated the threat of exposure by stabbing their host to death. But which murderer did it? After a bit of digging into the psychology of each suspect's alleged crimes and a close analysis of the bridge scores, Poirot eliminates Mrs. Lorrimer (because anyone who bids so carefully would never engage in a murder so unpremeditated), Anne Meredith (whose card playing suggests a nature too timid for so bold a murder), and Mr. Depard (because Poirot's decided he's not actually a murderer), leaving only Dr. Roberts, whose play suggests a man bold enough to seize opportunities when they present themselves. As if that weren't enough fun, Christie totally leans into the association of bridge with bluffing: Roberts kills Lorrimer and stages it to look like a suicide, hoping to bluff the police into believing she killed Shaitana; Poirot bluffs Meredith into revealing kleptomaniacal tendencies by tempting her with nylons; Poirot bluffs Roberts into a confession by hiring an actor to pretend to have been a window-cleaner who witnessed Lorrimer's death. All this plus Ariadne Oliver - whose jaded insights into the mystery writing business are always a hoot - make this one a delight.
Murder in the Mews (Hercule Poirot's 15th adventure). This is yet another short story collection, as uneven as the first. Murder in the Mews and Dead Man's Mirror are rather clever, but The Incredible Theft isn't all that incredible, and Triangle at Rhodes feels like a dress rehearsal for Death on the Nile.
Murder in the Mews. Instead of a murder staged to look like a suicide, this one turns out to be a suicide staged to look like a murder, orchestrated by the dead girl's roommate in hopes that the blackmailer who tormented her friend ends up convicted for her murder. The victim is left handed, the wound is on the left side - inconvenient facts that do rather suggest suicide - so how does the friend make the police suspect murder? Move the gun to her friend's right hand, rearrange the things in the apartment to make it appear the friend was right-handed, and dispose of her friends' left-handed golf clubs. But of course Poirot's not so easily fooled.
The Incredible Theft. Plans for a revolutionary new fighter plane have gone missing from Lord Mayfield's safe during the course of a house party. Poirot sorts through a host of red herrings and uses process of elimination to realize the only person who could have stolen Lord Mayfield's plans is ... Lord Mayfield himself, being blackmailed by a foreign power. (But to reassure readers that a British aristocrat would never actually engage in treason, she posits that - even in his extremity - Mayfield altered the plans before turning them over, rendering them unusable.)
Dead Man's Mirror. First the guests hear the sound of the dinner gong, then the sound of a shot; soon after, their host, Sir Chevenix-Gore is found dead in his study. But of course all is not as it seems. The dinner gong? Actually sounded by the ricocheting bullet the killed C-G. Which means the second shot wasn't a bullet at all, but simulated by the murderer popping a paper bag, part of her plan to muddy the timing of the death so that it would be taken for a suicide.
Triangle at Rhodes. The "romantic triangle" of the title: vivacious Valentine, her hubby Tony, and hunky Douglas Gold, husband of poor mousy Marjory, cast in the roll of betrayed spouse. Poirot, sensing danger, warns Marjory to leave Rhodes immediately and take her hunky hubby with her, but of course she doesn't, and of course Valentine ends up murdered. Come to find out mousy Marjory orchestrated the whole fake triangle drama in cahoots with her lover Tony ... and that Poirot suspected the truth all along! He wasn't suggesting that Marjory leave because he feared for her life; he was asking her to leave because he feared for her soul - a nice bit of dramatic irony.
Dumb Witness (Hercule Poirot's 16th adventure). Always felt this one was a little disappointing: why introduce a cute dog (the "dumb witness" of the title) and then make so little use of him? Alas, Bob the terrier's only meaningful purpose is to serve as a stooge: Bella, daughter of wealthy Emily Arundell, installs a tripwire on the stairs, intending to blame her mother's fatal fall on Bob's ball. However, Emily inconveniently doesn't die and instead calls in Poirot to investigate. By the time Poirot arrives, Emily is dead, ostensibly of chronic liver problems ... but of course no death in an Agatha Christie book is actually due to natural causes: Bella has slipped a little phosphorous in her mom's meds, the better to speed up the inheritance she plans to use to leave her Greek doctor hubby, who she accuses of being a bully. The clues that reveal the solution: a nail hole at the head of the stairs (where a tripwire was temporarily installed), the fact that the dead woman was seen to have exhaled a greenish substance upon her death (phosphorous is luminescent), and a broach glanced in a mirror bearing the initials TA - or, rather, AT, as Poirot eventually deduces, reversed images in mirrors being a trope that Christie employs in this and several other novels. This one features Hastings at his most dense and, frankly, Poirot isn't at his best either, but introducing a seance in order to suggest the green glow is an aura or escaping soul is clever, and Poirot's interactions with Bob add a bit of whimsy.
Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot's 17th adventure). The story opens on two BFFs, Linnett (fabulously wealthy) and Jacqueline (poor) sharing big news: Jacqueline is in love with dreamy but destitute Simon, and marriage is imminent. A year later, however, Linnett is the one married to Simon, enjoying a fabulous honeymoon on the Nile, and Jacqueline has become their pathetic stalker, constantly looking for public opportunities to shame her former BFF and fiancé. Not surprising, then, that Jacqueline is suspect #1 when Linnett is found shot to death in her cabin, if only she didn't have an iron-clad alibi: she was under sedation and being monitored by a doctor when the crime occurred. Husband Simon has an alibi too: he was in bed with a bullet in his leg, put there by Jacqueline in a fit of wrathful hysteria. But all is not as it appears, of course! The whole thing turns out to have been an elaborately scripted bit of playacting, with Jacqueline feigning hysteria and the timing of the bullet wound faked with the help of red nail polish, making it appear that the murder occurred when Simon was unable to walk. Because, you see, Simon never actually betrayed Jacqueline: the whole year-long charade has been a plot by the two of them to inherit Linnett's money and live happily ever after. But of course Poirot pieces together the clues (that missing red nail polish!) and the lovers, facing exposure, choose suicide over separation ... very Romeo and Juliet-esque. Generally acknowledged to be one of Christie's very best slights-of-hand.
Appointment with Death (Hercule Poirot's 18th adventure). This one occurs on location at an archeological dig in Petra, though location turns out not to play much of a role in the plot. Mrs. Boynton, former prison warden and dedicated sadist, is found murdered while on an excavation being overseen by her husband, but no one's particularly put out by the death: certainly not any of her 3 stepchildren, her natural child, or Miss Peirce, the weak-willed nanny Boynton bullied into cruelly abusing all of the children when they were young. Though waters are briefly muddied by the children's attempts to protect each other (nothing like shared abuse to create lasting interdependence), the murderer is revealed to be Lady Westholme, a larger-than-life, Gertrude Bell-esque politician with a secret to protect: she was once a prisoner in Boynton's prison, a fact that Boynton was planning to use to torment her. Poirot's clue? His suspicion that Boynton must have been killed by an outsider, because the murder method (an injection of digitoxin) was unnecessary; as all her family members knew, Boynton was giving herself regular injections, so it would have made much more sense to just switch out her medicine with the poison and let her inject herself. Not the most fullproof logic, perhaps, but the book contains uncharacteristically complex psychological depths. The title, FYI, is a reference to the old fable about the man who, meeting death in a bazaar in Baghdad, flees immediately to Samarra, only to encounter death waiting for him there. Says death: "I too was puzzled to meet you in Baghdad, as our appointment was always for Samarra" - a fable that doesn't quite parallel the events of the story but suggests that after a lifetime of dishing out cruelty, Boynton was predestined to die a nasty death at someone's hands.
Hercule Poirot's Christmas (Hercule Poirot's 19th adventure). From the moment we meet cruel, irascible millionaire Simeon Lee, we know someone's going to kill him. Who but a malicious churl summons his family to a Christmas Eve gathering to announce that he's changing his will? Furthermore, his fortune derives from rights to a diamond mine that he secured by murdering his partner; oh, and he bedded and then abandoned the woman who saved him from death in the deserts of South Africa. Predictably, Simeon ends up dead, his body discovered in a locked study amidst a chaos of overturned furniture. Suspicion falls on Stephen Farr, Simeon's "surprise" guest - an illegitimate son who Simeon was planning to spring on the family and add to his will, just to enjoy the discomfiture of the other heirs. But perhaps the murderer is Pilar, a heretofore unsuspected granddaughter who also shows up unannounced? Anyone conversant with Christie knows better than to fall for such obvious red herrings! Intrigued by the confusion of the family's long-time butler, Poirot eventually also notes physical similarities between certain family portraits and young Inspector Sugden, the police detective who conveniently appeared at the front door moments after the crime was discovered, from which he deduces that Sugden is yet another illegitimate son, this one from Simeon's liaison with his South African angel of mercy. The death itself is rather cleverly affected by means of a whoopie cushion which is used to trigger the collapsing furniture and create the impression of a death cry long after Simeon was already dead. Leave it to Christie to come up with the idea of using a whoopie cushion as an alibi, and positing the investigator as the murderer!
Sad Cypress (Hercule Poirot's 20th adventure). This one requires a family tree to figure out how the murder of Aunt Laura and the subsequent murder of the lodgekeeper's daughter (Mary) end up benefiting Nurse Hopkins, the woman hired to care for Aunt Laura in her infirmity. Aunt Laura, it is discovered, was killed by a tube of morphine Nurse Hopkins claims to have lost. But the real puzzle is how the poison was administered to Mary - was it via the tea prepared by Nurse Hopkins, or the fish sandwiches prepared by Aunt Laura's heir Elinor? In keeping with her profession, Hopkins' murder method is medical: having poisoned the tea she shared with Mary, she then injected herself with an emetic that allowed her to throw up the poison before it can effect her, a fact which Poirot intuits from two clues: (1) a chemical label altered to disguise the fact that the chemical is an emetic, and (2) a scratch/pinprick on Nurse Hopkins' arm, left by the hypodermic needle that she used to inject the emetic (and not, as Hopkins keeps claiming, a scratch from a rose thorn). A satisfyingly twisty reveal, because who suspects a murderer of knowingly poisoning themselves? Everything is revealed in a dramatic courtroom finale in which the likeable Elinor is preserved from a murder conviction by Poirot's deductions.
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (Hercule Poirot's 21st adventure). Dentists may not be the most popular people, but who would actually kill one? Answer: someone who needs to impersonate a dentist in order to kill one of his patients, and then blame the death on the dentist by staging the patient's death as malpractice and dentist's death on guilt-induced suicide. But why does Mr. Amberiosis, the dentist's patient, need to die? Because a casual acquaintance of his, the unassuming Mabelle, has shared with him information that aspiring blackmailer Amberiosis cleverly realizes could destroy the career of ambitious politician Alistair Blunt: the fact that Blunt is a bigamist, having married his current wealthy, socially prominent wife (a move critical to advancing his political career) without actually divorcing his first wife, Gerda - a liaison formed years ago in India when Blunt, Gerda & Mabelle were all members of a jolly travelling repertory theatre company. But even Mabelle isn't aware of the depth of Blunt's perfidy, for it turns out Gerda & Blunt are still very much in love and hiding their ongoing liaison by passing Gerda off as a Blunt cousin. Facing blackmail and the risk of discovery, Gerda offs poor Mabelle then engages in a charade whereby her lover/husband Blunt, masquerading as the dentist, and Gerda, masquerading as his nurse, dispose of the blackmailing Amberiosis ... because they're both former actors, see? (Also, the subterfuge allows them to doctor the dental records to ensure that Mabelle's corpse, if/when discovered, will be misidentified.) The plot hits as over-elaborate and hinges on Poirot noticing that fake nurse Gerda's shoe buckles are all wrong, which strains credibility, but - hey - they can't all be Rembrandts.
Evil Under the Sun (Hercule Poirot's 22nd adventure). The location is a sunny Devon seaside resort; the victim, unpopular actress Arlena Marshall; the baddie, Patrick, her business manager; the motive, to prevent the discovery that Patrick has embezzled most of Arlene's fortune. This one is about how to stage a murder in such a way as to appear to have an alibi. Patrick's solution: arrange to discover the "dead body" while in the company of an honest stooge, send the stooge off to get help, switch out the faux "dead body" (actually Patrick's obliging, very-much-alive wife Caroline) for the real dead body of Arlene (which has been stowed away in a nearby cave, awaiting the substitution), hustle your wife back to the hotel to show off the tan she just got sunbathing (instead of, you know, climbing up and down cliffs to murder people), but that actually came from a bottle, and - finally - arrange for yet another honest stooge to swear that she at the hotel when the murder occurred, based on the evidence of a watch that has been secretly set ahead 20mins. It's not like Patrick and Caro are new to murder: come to find out, they've committed a very similar murder once before, in order to dispose of Patrick's inconvenient first wife. Alas for them, Poirot spots the similarities between that past murder and the current one, figures out that Caro contrived the alluring red herring pointing to Arlena's guilt-ridden stepdaughter as the villain, and discerns the significance of the bottle of suntan lotion carelessly hurled out a window.
Five Little Pigs (Hercule Poirot's 23rd adventure). Carla Crale has grown up believing that her mother Caroline murdered her artist father Amyas Crale, consumed by jealousy over Crale's growing affection for his latest model, Elsa. Caroline was executed for the crime, but not before penning a letter to be delivered to her daughter upon her 21st birthday, in which Caroline proclaims her innocence but also her ungrudging acceptance of her fate. Despite the long gap in time, Carla pleads with Poirot to figure out what actually occurred, a process which is facilitated by the fact that there are only five suspects - the five pigs of the book's title. After a few interviews and a consultation with his little grey cells, Poirot concludes that Caroline was innocent, but sacrificed herself to protect the person she was convinced had actually committed the crime, her half-sister Angela ... thus fixing the whole "I fake-confessed in order to protect the guilt of someone I loved" plot twist as a genre institution. Tragically, however, Poirot reveals that Angela didn't commit the crime either - the real culprit was Amyas's model Elsa, la belle dame sans merci, driven to murderous rage by an overheard conversation in which Amyas reassured his wife that his attraction for Elsa is just a whim and that he had no intention of running off with her.
The Hollow (Hercule Poirot's 24th adventure). The twist of this one is that the obvious suspect turns out to be the actual murderer - who sees that coming? Gerda, the worshipfully devoted wife of John, is discovered literally standing over the body of dead husband, gun in hand. But the waters muddy when it is discovered that the gun she's holding isn't the gun that killed John. And what to make of John's last gasping utterance: "Henrietta"? As we come to discover, it's not an accusation, it's a plea: in a paroxysm of self-recrimination (having succumbed to a one-night-stand with a former lover, which lapse triggered Gerda's fatal jealousy), John is asking his cousin Henrietta to protect Gerda from being tried for his murder. Cue a flurry of misdirection orchestrated by the family: faked fingerprints, a gun concealed in a clay sculpture. etc. The mystery is acceptably mysterious, but definitely get the feeling that Christie's focus here is exploring the extremes of love, the selfish/selfless acts of Gerda, John and Henrietta underscored by yet another subplot in which a pair of hapless lovers keep sacrificing their own happiness under the delusion that they're protecting the happiness of the other.
The Labors of Hercules (Hercule Poirot's 25th adventure). Not sure why it took 25 books for Christie to finally lean into the natural association between Hercules Poirot and his mythological namesake! The short story format doesn't allow for the development of elaborate red herrings, so many of these emphasize novel reveals or introduce appealing characters.
The Nemean Lion. Tells the story of a "criminal organization" composed entirely of the abused "companions" of selfish, wealth women, who resort to dog-napping in order to extort money and exact revenge upon the women who have treat them so callously. Though Poirot forces them to suspend their activities, his sentiments are entirely on the side of the companions, which is an endearing touch.
The Lernaean Hydra. Poor Dr. Oldfield is being harassed by persistent gossip that he poisoned his wife in order to canoodle with his comely dispenser, Jean. The culprit turns out to be a former employee out for revenge - she herself had designs upon Oldfield's heart before Jean came along. Poirot confronts her with the fact that hasn't just been gossiping - she's also been manufacturing "evidences" of Oldfield's guilt, like "witnessing" Jean storing arsenic in a compact that, Poirot reveals, wasn't manufactured at the time of the wife's death. Gossip is indeed hydra-like, Poirot notes; the only way to kill it is to lop it off at the source.
The Arcadian Deer. A dishy young auto mechanic asks Poirot to find out what happened to Nita, the timid maid with whom he spent a few magical hours before vanishing. Come to find out Nita was never a maid: Nita is short for "incognita," because the "maid" he fell for was in fact the maid's mistress, a famous ballerina. Though she's now dying of TB in a Swiss hotel, Poirot convinces her to live out the rest of her days in England with her adoring Adonis.
The Erymanthian Boar. While in Switzerland looking for his missing ballerina, Poirot stumbles upon another adventure: the arch-criminal Marrascaud ("the boar") is apparently staying at his hotel - but why, and masquerading as which of the guests? The answer: he's posing as the head waiter Gustave, and he's there to undergo plastic surgery to change his appearance. (Another of the guests is a famous plastic surgeon.) Though "Gustave" tries to pass off his bandaged face as the result of an attack by the arch criminal's henchman - acting under the mistaken impression that Gustave is an undercover police detective - Poirot's little grey cells are not fooled.
The Augean Stables. A scandal sheet accuses a beloved politician of skullduggery, forcing his resignation. Shortly thereafter, the same scandal sheet takes aim at the politician's daughter-in-law, suggesting that she's wantonly disporting herself with wayward gigolos. Except that the wife is engaged in nothing remotely sordid; rather, she and Poirot have manufactured the entire scandal, in such a way as to insure her innocence can be easily proven. Their logic: once the allegations against the daughter-in-law are proved false, the subsequent groundswell of outrage and sympathy will be enough to redeem the politician's reputation as well, and shut down the scandal sheet for good.
The Stymphalean Birds. Clever Elise cons a gullible mark - an upstanding politician - into caring about her, then she and her mother stage a performance in which Elise appears to kill her abusive husband. The griff? Convince their mark that the only way to save Elise from jail is to bribe the local officials, if the mark will just be generous enough provide the money they need.
The Cretan Bull. Noble young Hugh Chandler fears he is going mad: apparently he's been going around the countryside slaughtering animals, based on the blood found on his clothes - though he never remembers these incidents. The true culprit, however, is Hugh's father, the Admiral, who's never stop smarting over the fact that Hugh's the love child of his wife and a lover. Not only has the Admiral been slipping atropine, a reality-altering drug, into Hugh's shaving cream, and them manufacturing the evidences of insanity, but he also orchestrated the death of his wife years ago. Hugh is eventually revealed not to have inherited the family madness ... but clearly his father, the Admiral, has.
The Horses of Diomedes. The wild horses of the title are transformed here into the four wild, party-mad daughters of General Grant. After being called in by a friend who's sweet on one of the girls (Sheila), however, Poirot discovers that there is no such family: Grant is a drug lord and the "daughters" are his distributors. The giveaway: Grant pretends to gout, but when Poirot bumps into his leg, there's no groan of pain. Definitely not an investigative masterpiece but, to make up for it, Christie provides us with a nice little redemption character arc in which Sheila informs on her boss and renounces her evil ways.
The Girdle of Hippolyta. How to smuggle a stolen Rubens ("The Girdle of Hippolyta") through customs? One option: conceal it beneath an amateurish schoolgirl painting and place it in the trunk of a "faux" schoolgirl, who later transforms back into an adult passenger on the train. Fortunately, Poirot's on hand to explain the mystery of the vanishing schoolgirl and intuit the importance of the trunk.
The Flock of Geryon. This one is more adventure story than puzzle, as it's pretty obvious that the cult leader (a former chemist) is injecting his adherents with a drug that induces euphoria, then - once they've changed their wills in his favor - injecting them with various bacteria to simulate death by natural causes. The appeal is Poirot's collaboration with Miss Carnaby, the mastermind of the dog-napping gang described in The Nemean Lion, who infiltrates the cult and feeds Poirot the info he needs to expose the con.
The Apples of Hesperides. A chalice once owned by the notorious Borgias has gone missing, but all three burglars suspected of the crime have died and there's no hint of anyone trying to resell the chalice on the black market. Poirot, suspecting the chalice must be in the hands of someone who doesn't care about its value, tracks it down to one of the thief's daughters, a nun, who has indeed lifted the chalice from her fathers illicit collection and donated it to her order, where it is now being used for religious observances and to atone for her father's misdeeds.
The Capture of Cerberus. Imagine you're selling drugs at a Hell-themed nightclub, and you've just been informed that the cops are about to stage a raid. Quick: where do you hide the drugs? The solution posited here: in the mouth of the club's ferocious guard dog, Cerberus! Fortunately, Cerberus has also availed himself of a bit of fabric from the malefactor's sleeve, which leads Poirot to the identity of the pusher, who is revealed to be in cahoots with yet another deplorable who helps rich women pay for their habit by swapping their genuine jewels for paste replicas.
Taken at the Flood (Hercule Poirot's 26th adventure). Rosaleen marries Gordon Cloade only to lose him in an explosion two weeks later - barely time enough for the wedding cake to go stale, right? Much to the dismay of the Cloade heirs, however, Rosaleen (and, by extension, her domineering brother David) inherits all of Gordon's goodies. Until, that is, a stranger arrives in town claiming to be Rosaleen's first husband, not as dead as he was reported to be. If the stranger is Rosaleen's first hubby, then the marriage to Cloade is nullified and the Cloade heirs regain control of the estate. Cue a mad scramble by various interested parties, which results in the death of the stranger (which turns out to be an accident), a friend of the first husband (which turns out to be suicide), and eventually Rosaleen herself (the only murder in the lot, engineered by "brother" David after she becomes a hinderance). Eventually the Cloades emerge victorious - not because the stranger was, in fact, Rosaleen's starter hubby (he wasn't), but because there is no Rosaleen: when the real Rosaleen died along with her husband in the explosion, brother David talked the couple's maid (an ex-lover) into masquerading as Cloade's new wife - a relatively easy substitution, since the marriage was so freshly-minted, no one in the family had yet met the blushing bride. There's a subplot involving drug use, another involving a "message from the spirit world" - two of Christie's favorite go-tos - but neither add anything substantive to the plot.
Mrs. McGinty's Dead (Hercule Poirot's 27th adventure). This one's a lovely tangle of people with guilty secrets to hide, all linked by the fact they share a housekeeper, the unfortunate Mrs. McGinty, who is discovered dead after writing a letter to a newspaper in which she claims to have found evidence that someone in one of the houses she cleans was once involved in a notorious murder. The villain is eventually revealed to be the son of Eva Hope, a former governess who likely killed her mistress in order to marry the mister, though it's the mister who ended up hanging for the crime. Their illicit son, Evelyn, was then adopted by the Upwards and renamed Robin ... and Evelyn/Robin does not want the old scandal resurfacing as he's enjoying his life (and financial expectations) as an Upward. If only Mrs. McGinty hadn't discovered that photo of Eva Kane with the caption "My mother" while tidying the Upward residence! But at least everyone's looking for a female suspect, having mistaken "Evelyn" for a girls name. This one is packed with subplots (almost, one might say, like red herrings in a tin) which not only muddy the water but add comic relief (Poirot's horrified reaction to the untidy guest house in which he is forced to stay) and an affecting bit of pathos (the affection of a mistreated stepdaughter towards the man falsely accused of Mrs. McGinty's murder). Also, someone tries to shove Poirot under a train, which is plain bad sportsmanship.
After the Funeral (Hercule Poirot's 28th adventure). Wealthy Richard Abernethie has died, leaving the usual cast of more or less greedy heirs to inherit his estate - a ready-made school of red herrings, one might say. One of these is Richard's sister Cora, the black sheep of the family, an amateur painter and art collector who has spent the last couple decades living an isolated life with only her companion, the bashful Miss Gilcrest, for company. Which is important to know, because it explains why no one realizes that the "Cora" who shows up at the funeral is in fact Miss Gilcrest in disguise. The purpose of the impersonation: to conceal the fact that Miss Gilcrest has killed Cora herself in order to inherit her employers' art collection. It appears, you see, that dotty old Cora has unknowingly acquired herself a Vermeer, which Vermeer not-so-dotty Gilcrest has recognized and now covets as the means of rebuilding her beloved tea shop that was destroyed in the war. (A little tragic, that.) Her hope is to convince the police that Richard was murdered so that Cora's death will also be blamed on the nonexistent malefactor, but her plan is foiled when Poirot realizes that, in the process of rehearsing Cora's mannerisms in a mirror in preparation for her impersonation, Miss Gilcrest inadvertently has learned and performed the mannerisms in reverse, thus betraying herself.
Hickory Dickory Dock (Hercule Poirot's 29th adventure). Imagine you're a young college student sharing a hostel with a dreamy psychology student who has friend-zoned you. What to do? Celia's solution: feign kleptomania, because what better way to captivate a psychologist than by teasing them with a little deviant behaviour? Poirot rather effortless tricks silly Celia into a confession - but why does she continue to deny responsibility for some of the missing items? Because, as it turns out, just about everyone at the hostel is engaged in some sort of scheme that requires purloined props: stethoscopes stolen to aid medical impersonations, a diamond ring "stolen" to provide cover for substituting a fake, lightbulbs stolen to conceal dark deeds. All seemingly benign ... until poor Celia, fellow hostel-mate Patricia, and the landlady all end up dead. What's going on? Poirot comes to realize that that charming Nigel Chapman (abetted by fellow hostel-mate Valerie) is, in fact, the brains behind a scheme to smuggle drugs and gems into the country in the backpacks of his fellow students. Two of the deaths were necessary to forestall discovery of his smuggling operation; the third, to forestall discovery of the fact that it was Nigel (not his father) who murdered his mother some years before. A rather preposterous plot that, by the way, has nothing meaningful to do with the rhyme it is named after (except that the hostel is on Hickory Road, and someone's going to end up on the dock), but Christie was one of the first to debut a high-functioning, charismatic sociopath as the villian - and there was poor Celia, thinking her feigned kleptomania was the most abnormal psychology on tap.
Dead Man's Folly (Hercule Poirot's 30th adventure). Hattie is a wealthy but rather dimwitted girl informally adopted by Mrs. Folliat, who has tragically lost both her own sons in the war. Mrs. Folliat even introduces Hattie to the charming George Stubbs, the new owner of Mrs. Folliat's previous ancestral pile, who woos and weds her. What Hattie doesn't realize is that George isn't George - he's Mrs. Folliat's son James, who didn't die in the war after all, but did desert - your first hint that James is a bad seed. More hints: having married Hattie, he promptly steals all her money, kills her, buries her, arranges for a folly to be built over the grave, and replaces real-Hattie with the Italian woman he wed while still on the lam. All seems to be going well for the diabolical duo (James & fake-Hattie) until two things happen: real-Hattie's cousin threatens to drop by for a visit, and the old gardener's granddaughter decides to engage in a bit of blackmail. Alas, the couple are left with no option but to murder the blackmailing granddaughter and arrange for fake-Hattie to mysteriously vanish (disguised as a passing backpacker) before the inconvenient cousin's arrival. All this is set against the backdrop of a charitable fete complete with a "Murder Hunt" organized by Ariadne Oliver, which is kind of fun, but the red herrings are uncharacteristically unconvincing, the characters are uniformly unlikeable (even Oliver is uncharacteristically annoying), and Poirot is definitely not at his best - his denoument is, of course, clear on whos, whats, whys, and wherefores, but light on details re. his deductive process. Or perhaps he's just had so much practice by now, he doesn't have to bother with clues any more - the solutions just dawn upon him, fully formed?
Cat Among the Pigeons (Hercule Poirot's 31st adventure). Christie's utilized two murderers before, but always working in tandem. In this one, however, Christie gives us two separate murderers with two separate motives, which intersect at an exclusive girl's school. In plot #1, a notorious former intelligence officer is intent on intercepting jewels smuggled into the country in the handle of a schoolgirl's tennis racket. Infiltrating the school as a secretary, she stumbles around the grounds after hours, searching tennis rackets and killing anyone who gets in her way - a gym teacher who discovers her searching; a French teacher who tries to blackmail her. In plot #2, the school's second-in-command, coveting the role of headmistress, offs her competitor. There's also a bit with a kidnapped princess, a mom who used to work in intelligence, and a rather poignant bit in which the aspiring headmistress/murderer, guilt-ridden, gives her life to protect the life of a colleague. It's actually one of the schoolgirls who finds the jewels in the tennis racket - but it's still up to the great detective to figure out (based on her "old knees") that the princess is an imposter, sent there in hopes of intercepting the jewels, her supposed "kidnapping" a ruse to exfiltrate her before she can be discovered; to realize that - despite remarkable similarities in the murders - they must be the work of two separate murderers; and to identify the tell-tale holes in the secretary's cover story. I like that the schoolgirls in this one are so clever and plucky - they insert a nice bit of energy into the investigation.
The Clocks (Hercule Poirot's 32nd adventure). Though the plot of this one is a bit of a muddle, there are some flashes of cleverness - like positing a Soviet spy ring run by a blind woman who encodes her messages using braille, and the part where Poirot figures out that mysterious note reading "M61)" - when read upside-down - ties the espionage subplot to a murder that's just occurred at 19 Wilbraham Crescent. All of which almost (but not quite) makes up for the fact that the six clocks found at the scene of the crime, set to various times, are just a red herring - something that the murderous Miss Martindale, owner of a secretarial agency, cribbed from an MS she was hired to type, meant to implicate one of the innocent secretaries in her employ. The blind woman, we eventually discover, is Martindale's mom, and apparently duplicity runs in the family, because Martindale's got her own scam going on: she's colluding with her brother-in-law to arrange for him to inherit his dead first wife's fortune by passing off his second wife as the first. Unfortunately, however, this requires murdering the friend of the first wife who would have been able to spot the substitution. Poirot is showing off in this one, solving the entire thing from his armchair based on information conveyed to him by the young intelligence officer sent to sort things out. He's out to prove that the most important clues often emerge in the course of casual conversation with the dramatic personae - so of course that's what ends up happening here.
Third Girl (Hercule Poirot's 33rd adventure). A strung-out young "hippie" (Norma) seeks out Poirot, convinced she's murdered someone - but thanks to all the drugs in her system (you get the sense that Christie did not approve of the '60s) she can't be sure. The plot that Poirot and Ariadne Oliver eventually uncover revolves around an impersonation: a chap named Robert Orwell is masquerading as Norma's long-lost father Andrew in order to help himself to the family fortune. Norma's taken in by the impersonation (she was, after all, only five yrs old when her father abandoned she and her mum), but in order to preserve the ruse, faux dad Robert/Andrew and his wife Mary do have to off one of Andrew's old mistresses and the painter they hired to create the painting of Robert/Andrew (in a dated style) that they are using to establish Robert/Andrew's bona fides. Moreover, they're planning to trick poor Norma (still traumatized by the messy suicide of her mother) into claiming responsibility for the painter's murder by (1) staging the painter's death to resemble her mum's suicide, (2) making sure Norma discovers the death (thus triggering her PTSD), and (3) keeping her doped up on mind-altering drugs to induce memory gaps and hallucinations. But how to lure Norma to the painter's apartment, and how to conveniently administer the necessary drugs? Why, simply have faux stepmom Mary throw on a wig and become one of Norma's roommates. Feel like Christie's reprising the whole "trick a mentally ill person into claiming responsibility" trope introduced in ABC Murders, but not quite succeeding.
Hallowe'en Party (Hercule Poirot's 34th adventure). A 13-year old girl known for lying is found drowned in an apple-dunking tub at a child's Halloween party, after confiding in family friend Ariadni Oliver that she once witnessed a murder. What her murderer doesn't realize is that the girl is merely repeating a story told to her by her BFF Miranda who is still alive, and who is eventually prevailed upon to reveal that, years ago, she's pretty sure she witnessed two people - who turn out to be her mother (Rowena) and the gardener (Michael) - murdering her au pair. Why? Miranda's aunt, appalled at her sister Rowena's sordid affair, had rewritten her will to benefit the au pair and disinherit Rowena - a major problem for Rowena's lover Michael, who was counting on that inheritance to realize his life's work, a perfect garden. (In addition to the au pair, the dreadful duo also off the solicitor hired to create the poorly-executed fake employed - successfully - to discredit the new will.) There's a melodramatic bit where Michael tries to use his influence over Miranda to lure her to a Druidic death (sacrificed to ancient gods), but of course Poirot ensures that Miranda is rescued and that the dastardly lovers are held responsible for their crimes. I get the the whole "ancient gods" thing can hit as hokey, but keep in mind that the book takes place at Hallowe'en, an event with roots in ancient Druidic ceremonies designed to placate the gods of the harvest, so I'm going to assume Christie was merely paying homage to the ancient antecedents of the holiday.
Elephants Can Remember (Hercule Poirot's 35th adventure). Desmond's unpleasant mama doesn't want her son marrying likeable Celia - but it is really because she's troubled by the murder-suicide of Celia's parents 12 years ago ... or is she more interested in her son's juicy trust fund, which she loses control of as soon as he marries? Poirot's called in to investigate the old scandal, but must rely on the memories of "elephants" - in particular, Celia's old nursemaid - to piece together the puzzle. Surprisingly, the murder-suicide does turn out to be an actual murder-suicide. But it's not his wife Margaret that General Alistair Ravenscroft shot before killing himself - it was Margaret's sister Dorothea. A month before the deaths, Dorothea - who already had a history of mental illness and violence - fatally injured Margaret, but before dying Margaret made her husband promise to protect Dorothea from arrest. In an act of astonishing devotion, Alistair abided by her wishes, placing Margaret's body at the base of a cliff, convincing everyone that the body belonged to Dorothea, and then allowing the actual Dorothea to pose as his wife. And then, when Dorothea shows signs of reverting to her homicidal ways, he commits his final act of devotion: killing Dorothea to ensure that (as he promised Margaret) she will never go to prison, even though this requires him to sacrifice his own life as well. Besides elephants, Poirot's investigation receives an important assist from Margaret's dog: the animal's sudden violent reaction towards his once-beloved mistress is instrumental in convincing Poirot that a substitution has occurred. Proving you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool dogs any of the time. Ironically, I've heard that Christie may have been experiencing memory lapses of her own by this time. Could this tale's focus on the importance of memory represent Christie's dawning awareness of her own declining mental faculties?
Curtain: Poirot's Last Case (Hercule Poirot's 36th - and last - adventure). This, famously, is the book Christie wrote halfway through her career but then locked away in a safe with instructions that it not be released until after her death. Why? Because she didn't want to be around to deal with the outrage sure to erupt when people realized that the identity of the murderer was ... Poirot himself. Leave it to Christie to save the twistiest twist for last! This is also an exercise in nostalgia, with Poirot returning Styles, the site of his first adventure, and reuniting with Hastings one last time. The villain in this one: a fellow named Norton who, Iago-like, possesses the gift of goading others into murder. Poirot calculates that he has facilitated at least six previous deaths, and has every intent of facilitating more. But since Norton isn't committing the murders himself, what can the police be expected to do? Poirot - now an old man - resolves to eliminate Norton himself. His plan: pose as a wheelchair-bound invalid (hiring a new manservant to facilitate the ruse); drug Norton (the old "the drug was in both our cups" trope, utilizing a sedative that Poirot's developed an immunity to); use the wheelchair to move Norton back to his room; disguise himself as Norton and arrange to be seen departing Poirot's room (because who's going to suspect the guy in the wheelchair of impersonating a man who is mobile?); then dispatch the sleeping Norton by means of a single, perfectly-centered bullet (yet another homage to The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the adventure that first introduced us to Poirot's OCD). Having committed the murder, Poirot then stops taking his heart medicine and dies of natural causes a few months later, revealing all in a posthumous letter to Hastings. Yes, I cried. I'm pretty sure everyone cries.
