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Series
The Hercule Poirot books follow Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective from his arrival in wartime England through the country houses, hotels, trains, archaeological expeditions and changing cities of the interwar and post-war decades. Captain Hastings, Inspector Japp, Ariadne Oliver and Miss Lemon recur, but each case is built around a new social group whose public manners conceal private resentments.
Across novels and story collections, Poirot treats motive and personality as carefully as physical evidence. The series records shifts in British life from landed households and international luxury travel to wartime anxiety, post-war austerity and the less deferential society of the 1960s and 1970s, while retaining the closed circles, precise clues and moral choices associated with Golden Age detective fiction.
Reading order
Essex, 1916. Captain Arthur Hastings, invalided home from the Western Front, is staying at Styles Court when wealthy Emily Inglethorp dies after a violent night-time seizure. Suspicion falls across a household divided by inheritance, an unpopular second marriage and the pressures of wartime life. Hastings calls…
Hercule Poirot receives an urgent appeal from Paul Renauld, a wealthy businessman who fears for his life, and travels with Hastings to the French resort of Merlinville. They arrive after Renauld has been stabbed and left beside an unfinished grave on a golf course, while his…
This collection brings together early investigations narrated by Captain Hastings. Poirot deals with jewel theft, abduction, blackmail, disputed wills, diplomatic secrets and apparently supernatural danger, moving between London flats, country houses, continental journeys and an excavation associated with a supposedly cursed Egyptian tomb. The shorter form…
In the village of King’s Abbot, a wealthy widow dies after being blackmailed and Roger Ackroyd is found stabbed in his locked study after receiving a revealing letter. Dr James Sheppard, the local physician, records the investigation and introduces his recently retired neighbour, Hercule Poirot. Poirot…
Captain Hastings returns from South America and finds Poirot engaged with a dying stranger who has left cryptic warnings about four powerful conspirators. The trail leads through assassinations, scientific secrets, impersonation and political intrigue as Poirot confronts an organisation whose members operate across national borders. More…
On the luxurious Blue Train to the French Riviera, American heiress Ruth Kettering is found murdered and a celebrated ruby has disappeared. Her estranged husband, her lover and several passengers have reasons to conceal their movements, while Katherine Grey, travelling after an unexpected inheritance, becomes drawn…
At the country house of physicist Sir Claud Amory, a formula with potentially destructive military value has been stolen. Amory gathers his family and guests in a darkened room and offers the thief a chance to return it, but when the lights come on he is…
While holidaying on the Cornish coast, Poirot meets Nick Buckley, the young owner of the decaying End House, after a bullet narrowly misses her. She treats several recent accidents lightly, but Poirot becomes convinced that someone is repeatedly trying to kill her. A house party, an…
Actress Jane Wilkinson asks Poirot to persuade her estranged husband, Lord Edgware, to grant a divorce. Edgware is soon found murdered, and witnesses insist that Jane visited him on the night of his death even though she appears to have an unbreakable alibi at a dinner…
Travelling west from Istanbul, Poirot joins the Orient Express shortly before heavy snow stops the train in Yugoslavia. An American passenger calling himself Ratchett is found stabbed in his locked compartment, and the remaining travellers offer conflicting evidence about a stranger seen in the corridor. The…
At a gathering hosted by retired actor Sir Charles Cartwright, a clergyman dies after drinking a cocktail, although no poison is found in the glass. When a physician later dies at another party attended by many of the same guests, Cartwright and Mr Satterthwaite begin an…
On a flight from Paris to Croydon, a moneylender is discovered dead in the rear cabin, apparently killed by a poisoned dart. Poirot is among the small number of passengers and briefly becomes a suspect because the weapon is found near his seat. The investigation moves…
Poirot receives letters announcing murders in towns whose names follow the alphabet. An ABC railway guide is left beside each victim, and a travelling stocking salesman appears repeatedly near the crime scenes, giving the police an apparently coherent suspect. The widening geographical pattern creates public fear…
Nurse Amy Leatheran is hired to care for Louise Leidner, the anxious wife of an archaeologist leading an expedition in Iraq. Louise claims that threatening messages from her supposedly dead first husband have followed her to the isolated dig house, where she is later found murdered…
The collector Mr Shaitana invites four investigators and four people he privately believes have committed undetected murders to dinner. During an evening of bridge, Shaitana is stabbed while sitting apart from the tables, leaving every member of the suspected group with an opportunity. Poirot, Superintendent Battle,…
This collection contains four substantial cases: a death in a mews on Guy Fawkes Night, the disappearance of sensitive military plans, a killing associated with a Spanish chest and a suspicious death in a secluded house. Poirot works with Inspector Japp and, in one case, must…
After a suspicious fall on the stairs, wealthy Emily Arundell writes to Poirot but dies before he receives the delayed letter. Her relatives expect to inherit, yet a late change to her will and the testimony of her wire-haired terrier Bob complicate the apparent natural death.…
Wealthy Linnet Ridgeway marries Simon Doyle, the former fiancé of her friend Jacqueline de Bellefort, and the couple travel to Egypt for their honeymoon. Jacqueline follows them, and the tension among the three intensifies aboard a Nile steamer carrying an international group of travellers. When Linnet…
The Boynton family travels through the Middle East under the control of its cruel matriarch, whose children have been trained into fear and dependence. At Petra, Mrs Boynton is found dead beside the camp, and almost every member of the group possesses both a motive and…
Simeon Lee summons his adult children to Gorston Hall for Christmas and deliberately provokes them with threats about money and legitimacy. Soon afterwards he is found brutally killed in a locked room, with overturned furniture suggesting a violent struggle. Poirot, visiting a local police chief, studies…
Elinor Carlisle is tried for poisoning Mary Gerrard, the young woman whose presence threatened both Elinor’s inheritance and her engagement to Roddy Welman. The evidence appears direct: Elinor prepared the final meal, possessed a clear motive and was present when Mary died. Asked to investigate before…
After Poirot visits his dentist, the man is found shot and the death is treated as suicide. A patient has disappeared, another body is misidentified, and the morning’s appointments connect respectable professionals, political activists and a powerful banker. Poirot follows the case through false identities and…
At an exclusive island hotel, glamorous actress Arlena Marshall attracts hostility and fascination while openly pursuing another guest’s husband. She is found strangled on an isolated beach, but the movements of holidaymakers and staff appear to give the principal suspects secure alibis. Poirot studies sunbathing routines,…
Carla Lemarchant asks Poirot to investigate the murder of her father, the painter Amyas Crale, for which her mother was convicted sixteen years earlier. With no crime scene left to inspect, Poirot approaches the five surviving witnesses and asks each to provide a written account of…
Poirot arrives for lunch at the Angkatells’ country house and finds Dr John Christow dying beside the swimming pool while his wife Gerda stands nearby holding a revolver. The scene looks almost theatrically complete, but the family’s behaviour makes Poirot suspect that its apparent clarity has…
Preparing for retirement, Poirot decides to undertake twelve final cases whose circumstances echo the mythological labours of his namesake. The investigations involve a missing Pekinese, a dangerous cult, criminal gangs, political scandal, art theft and people attempting to escape identities imposed upon them. The collection ranges…
The wealthy Gordon Cloade is killed during an air raid, leaving no will and apparently transferring his fortune to his young widow Rosaleen. His dependent relatives, who had expected continued support, gather in the village of Warmsley Vale as rumours spread that Rosaleen’s first husband may…
James Bentley has been convicted of killing his landlady, Mrs McGinty, for a small amount of money, but the investigating officer remains uneasy and asks Poirot to review the case. In the village of Broadhinny, Poirot discovers that Mrs McGinty had recognised a face in an…
After Richard Abernethie’s funeral, his sister Cora casually remarks that he was murdered. The family dismisses her comment until Cora herself is killed, forcing solicitor Mr Entwhistle to examine relatives whose financial problems give each of them an interest in the estate. Poirot enters the case…
Miss Lemon is troubled by a series of petty thefts at the international student hostel managed by her sister. Poirot visits after the stolen objects form an illogical pattern, and the apparent mischief escalates into poisoning and murder. The hostel brings together young people from Britain…
Crime writer Ariadne Oliver asks Poirot to attend a village fête at Nasse House, where she has designed a staged murder hunt but senses that someone is directing her arrangements. During the event, the girl playing the victim is found genuinely dead in the boathouse. Poirot…
After a revolution in the fictional Middle Eastern kingdom of Ramat, a cache of royal jewels is secretly carried to England. At Meadowbank, an elite girls’ school, a teacher is shot in the sports pavilion and further violence suggests that someone believes the jewels are hidden…
This collection brings together five Hercule Poirot stories and one Miss Marple case. Poirot confronts a jewel hidden during a country-house Christmas, a corpse concealed in a chest, a suspicious dream, an apparent suicide and a murder whose victim’s habits reveal that the obvious account cannot…
A young typist is sent to a house where she discovers a dead man surrounded by several clocks showing the same wrong time. The blind owner denies summoning her and the neighbours claim not to recognise the victim, leaving intelligence officer Colin Lamb to investigate both…
A young woman named Norma Restarick visits Poirot, says that she may have committed a murder and leaves after deciding he is too old to help. Poirot and Ariadne Oliver search through Norma’s shared London flat, her divided family and the counterculture surrounding her friends. The…
During preparations for a children’s Hallowe’en party, thirteen-year-old Joyce boasts that she once witnessed a murder. Before the evening ends she is found drowned in an apple-bobbing tub, and Ariadne Oliver asks Poirot to discover which unresolved death in the village may have prompted the killing.…
Ariadne Oliver is asked whether the mother of her goddaughter killed her husband or was killed by him in an apparent double suicide years earlier. Disturbed by the question, she consults Poirot and begins interviewing people whose memories of the couple have survived through gossip and…
Captain Hastings recounts eighteen cases from the period when Poirot was establishing his reputation in Britain. They range from theft, blackmail and kidnapping to political secrets and murder, and include investigations in London flats, country houses, trains, hotels and diplomatic households. The stories were first published…
An ageing and physically frail Poirot summons Hastings to Styles, now operating as a guest house, because he believes one resident has repeatedly manipulated other people into committing murder. No single crime provides a straightforward charge, and Poirot must work through Hastings while concealing the full…