Woman are an alien species to him but he is always willing to worship at the altar of the auburn-haired beauty, provided she’s a woman of good family and character and not one of these ‘new’ women. He’s an affable, reliable man, the epitome of his class, one step up from Bertie Wooster. Poirot, il est un connard, non?Ĭhristie skilfully manages to give us Hastings through his own eyes and still present someone different from the man Hastings sees when he looks in the mirror. A man whose vanity is displayed as much in his refusal to speak English fluently as his luxurious moustaches. Poirot, the small man with the large ego, a compulsion for neatness, a self-serving sense of humour and an analytical mind that treats people and their actions as no more than puzzle pieces. With rapid, deft strokes, Christie gives us a clear portrait of both men and the relationship between them.

What pulls the stories together, and what I found more interesting than the puzzles posed, is the way Poirot and Hastings are revealed to us. The only thing that they have in common is that they let Hercule Poirot play his part of Magician Detective, the man who can and does solve crimes while sitting at his desk with his eyes closed. We have spies, blackmailers, jewel thieves, cursed Egyptian tombs, a kidnapped Prime Minister and opportunistic but devilishly cunning murders. The subjects of the stories range widely.

They are short, energetic, playful pieces, all centring around Poirot’s brilliance in solving apparently unsolvable puzzles.Īt an average of fifteen pages per story, there isn’t a lot of space for anything more than exposition, investigation and resolution – think the kind of thirty-minute TV mystery shows that were pumped out in the 1970’s – but they’re delivered with brio, self-confidence and humour that makes them engaging. ‘Poirot Investigates’, originally published in 1924, is a collection of fourteen Poirot stories, told over 211 pages.

Poirot investigates stories