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Loading... Poirot's Early Cases (1974)by Agatha Christie
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. An enjoyable collection of eighteen short stories featuring Poirot (and often narrated by Captain Hastings), primarily published in magazines in the 1920s and 1930s. These are light, fun and a quick read. They have the flavour of their era, and most have been adapted for television. Several contained the kernels of later novels and novellas (Market Basing Mystery / Murder in the News, How does your garden grow / Dumb Witness, Problem at sea / Death on the Nile). A good introduction to Poirot, or a nice reacquaintance with an old friend. ( ) A nice collection of Hercule Poirot short stories featuring both Hugh Fraser (Capt. Hastings) and David Suchet (H. Poirot) reading the stories in turn. Humor and thrilling well mixed. Enjoyable. Agatha Christie's short stories are usually very easy to digest and the eighteen of them in this book is no exception. As hinted by in the review, this is early stories, and combined with being short stories mean that they lack in depth. On the other hand they are each interesting small and amusing puzzles so I don't miss the depth at all. A nice book to have by the bed, for consumption one short story at a time. This collection illustrates very well what is meant by the term "a cozy mystery." The stories in this book are like little puzzles, and they are a pleasure to read. Poirot is strong here, exercising his "little grey cells." I found it interesting that there are a couple of stories where Captain Hastings is not present. In the last story, we meet Poirot's secretary, Miss Lemon, who is passionate about filing systems but not so much about human interaction. The collection featured a story I had read before, the one about the Veiled Lady. I can't recall where I read it, likely in some other anthology, but it was nice rereading it in this collection. The neat thing about the book, for me, is that the stories were short. This makes for a nice sampler, and if you really like Poirot, it may encourage you to seek out the longer novels featuring the Belgian (not French, get it right) detective. In addition, for me, I find the time period where the tales take place, right after World War I and into the 20s, to be a fascinating time period, and Christie captures it well. Even something as simple as traveling by train, which we can't imagine as much today (certainly not in the U.S.) seems very romantic in Christie's work. Overall, this was a nice leisurely read for me. This title brings together 18 cases, and consisted of short stories I had mainly read in other collections. However I do not appear to have read Problem at Sea under that title. It was originally called Poirot and the Crime in the Cabin and was not published till 1936. The other 17 stories very largely first appeared in magazines in 1923, 1924, 1925, and 1928, 1929, and 1932. Here is a set of links in Wikipedia. You can also find them on my list of 155 short stories 1 Plot summaries 1.1 The Affair at the Victory Ball 1.2 The Adventure of the Clapham Cook 1.3 The Cornish Mystery 1.4 The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly 1.5 The Double Clue 1.6 The King of Clubs 1.7 The Lemesurier Inheritance 1.8 The Lost Mine 1.9 The Plymouth Express 1.10 The Chocolate Box 1.11 The Submarine Plans 1.12 The Third Floor Flat 1.13 Double Sin 1.14 The Market Basing Mystery 1.15 Wasps' Nest 1.16 The Veiled Lady 1.17 Problem at Sea 1.18 How Does Your Garden Grow? The narrator in all of the stories is Captain Hastings and between them they create a history of his connection with Poirot both before World War One and after the war. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to SeriesHercule Poirot (43 (short stories)) Belongs to Publisher SeriesSaPo (198) Selecciones de Biblioteca Oro (libro 293) Weltbild SammlerEditionen (48051) Is contained inContainsHas the adaptation
Captain Hastings recounts 18 of Poirot's early cases from the days before he was famous... Hercule Poirot delighted in telling people that he was probably the best detective in the world. So turning back the clock to trace eighteen of the cases which helped establish his professional reputation was always going to be a fascinating experience. With his career still in its formative years, the panache with which Hercule Poirot could solve even the most puzzling mystery is obvious. Chronicled by his friend Captain Hastings, these eighteen early cases - from theft and robbery to kidnapping and murder - were all guaranteed to test Poirot's soon-to-be-famous 'little grey cells' to their absolute limit. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.912Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1901-1945LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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