Title: Hercule Poirot’s Casebook
Author: Agatha Christie
Type: Fiction
Page Count: 272
Rating: 3.5/5
I picked this book up because I’ve been slowly working my way through all of Agatha Christie’s books and this one happened to be the next one I needed alphabetically. It was actually a pretty surreal reading experience because some of the stories felt familiar and I feel like I might have read them before in some other collection of stories.
Still, it was nice to get back to Poirot for a little while, even though I do find him kind of irritating quite often. It was also interesting to see a little bit more of a cross-section of the world in which he lived, which is arguably done better here than in any of the novels just because of the nature of short stories.
One thing that did surprise me was how little Poirot was featured in some of the cases. He was almost a part of the backdrop with the stories happening around him, rather than an active driver of the story line. Still, even when that happened, I thought it worked reasonably well, and so I don’t really have any complaints.
All in all, I would recommend this book, especially if you’re a big fan of Agatha Christie and you’ve been working your way through everything she ever wrote. I just don’t think I’d suggest it as your first Agatha Christie book, even though it is quite a cool little collection of short stories. It’s just not her best, which I would argue is probably Miss Marple’s Final Cases.
