Agatha Christie: Poirot’s Early Cases
Agatha Christie: Murder in the Mews
Agatha Christie: The Harlequin Tea Set
Agatha Christie: The Labours of Hercules
Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920 and soon brought fame to the author and also to her fictional detective, Poirot. Hercule Poirot investigates in a total of 33 novels and 7 short story collections. Since The Mysterious Affair at Styles, there have been many movie, theater, cartoon and graphic novel adaptations. There was even a video game made about the Belgian detective, and his most famous movie actor is David Suchet. Adaptation of the stories is still happening in the form of movies and series. Thanks to Sophie Hannah, we can see the world’s most famous detective investigating again in book pages.
Poirot is usually associated with the novels Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, but there are also many short stories about his investigations. Lot of them are known from the new, seasons volumes, but The labours of Hercules are better read in order. (Similar to Tommy and Tuppence’s No.16.) The stories are episodic and loosely connected, but they are strung together on a train of thought: at the end of Poirot’s career, he decides to complete 12 tasks, true to his Greek namesake, before retiring completely. The description and solution of the cases are also generally unusual and the atmosphere of the short stories is very modern. This book has become a new favorite of mine.
Agatha Christie is the Queen of Crime. Her works have been translated into 103 languages and, with 2 billion copies sold, she is the best-selling fiction writer of all time. Her plays have already been played 25,000 times and Mousetrap holds the record for the longest running drama in the world. During her life, she wrote 66 detective novels, 14 volumes of short stories, 17 plays, 3 volumes of poems and 2 autobiographical novels. She is also the author of romantic novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Most of the murders she wrote about were done by poison and three-quarters of her murderers were women. In addition to her two most famous detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Parker Pyne, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, and the enigmatic Mr. Quin also solve mysteries.
