Today i completed reading all poirot novels and short stories.
This was a project i embarked on 2 years back while in hospital recovering from a surgery. I had completed reading "Mysterious affair at Styles" and i was hooked.
I began to read all poirot novels in the published order. Some of them were brilliant, and quite a few, not quite so. But it was a pleasurable journey. Every good one was complex, and satisfying to the core. It was like poirot and hastings became my friends. When i read that sentence in "Curtain: Poirot's last case" i was heart-broken. It was like i lost a long-known friend.
There are 33 novels and 51 short stories featuring Hercule Poirot. These are my favorites among them:
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Lord Edgware Dies
Murder on the Orient Express
Murder in Mesopotamia
Death on the Nile
Appointment with Death
Sad Cypress
Five Little Pigs
After the Funeral
Dead Man's Folly
The Clocks
Hallowe'en Party
Curtain
It is said that like Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie was also fed up with the popularity of Poirot after some time. This is evident in some of the later books.
where sometimes Poirot makes very late entries, or is lazily written. Sometimes Christie tries her hand at something where Poirot doesn't really fit in - spy thrillers. These kind of novels were boring. (The Big Four etc.)
Sometimes ideas are rehashed - The Mystery of the Blue Train is a stretched version of the short story The Plymouth Express. One thing i noted is that this story was used in one of the issues of "Inspector Garud"
Poirot is not as accessible as Holmes. He is more proud of himself, (sometimes even ridicules Holmes!) has a lot of peculiar old-fashioned ideas. He holds a lot of cards to himself till the end.
But he is a "real nice little man!" I am going to miss him.
