Hercule Poirot
Created by: Dame Agatha Christie
With his little grey cells and shining green eyes, this egghead gentleman, Hercule Poirot, solves mysteries no matter how baffling they may be.
Poirot is a belgian refugee in England after World War I and a former policeman. He is a bit vain and has a flair for the dramatics, preferring to reveal
the culprit at the most dramatic moment surrounded by the cast of characters. He is also a very neat and orderly person, with his habit of straightening things
or arranging them especially when he is very stressed by a case.
In some of his cases, he is accompanied by Captain Arthur Hastings, a good friend of Poirot, who narrates the story. Though
in other cases the story is told in third person or by a one-off character. Poirot is quite a popular character, having multiple movie and TV adaptations and his name
along with his creator, Dame Agatha Christie is arguably synonymous with whodunnits or mystery stories where identifying the culprit is the focus and
is among the cast of characters.
A funny personal thing is that my first encounter with any Poirot-related stuff was a pastiche of him. Not sure if anyone else remembers Hercule Poirat from
Geronimo Stilton (which was my sht as a kid). A detective rat wearing a yellow hat and trenchcoat. So when i actually discovered and first read a
Poirot book (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd iirc), my head keeps picturing a funny little man with the same yellow hat and trenchcoat.
Books
Dame Agatha Christie has written 38 Hercule Poirot books.
1 (actually read 4 but i'm not counting my digital copies) of 38 stories read (3%)The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Captain Arthur Hastings visits the home of his old friend, John Cavendish, at Styles Court in Essex.
There are some tensions in the household however, especially towards, the man John's stepmother, Emily Inglethorp, has recently remarried to,
Alfred Inglethorp. As most believe he married her for her money. Things get even worse, as one morning, the household wakes up to a very sick
Emily. She eventually dies and it's revealed that she has been poisoned with strychnine. Hastings calls on his old friend
Hercule Poirot to identify the culprit among the residents of the Styles household.
i quite enjoyed this one despite well... the pretty contrived and convoluted plan the culprit schemed. It was still quite a ride, i actually found it
pretty comical how the book pulls a 180 (or i guess in this case, a 360?) at the end, i audibly chuckled reading it, it was really out of nowhere and
i don't think it's really solvable? but i respect it, it's a bold twist to pull off and it was done in an entertaining way.
Especially since i was actually able to correctly predict a part of the incident, why and how they did it, only for it to be not connected to the
murder at all... You can already see how playful and deceitful Agatha Christie's writing is, despite this book essentially being a dare by her sister.
Another noteworthy thing is Hastings as a narrator and his dynamic with Poirot. There's quite some amusing amount of
passive aggresive tension between them due to Poirot being so secretive. And everytime he makes a certain deduction about a certain character
i just immediately rule them out because i know Poirot is gonna go and prove him wrong. Though jokes on me i suppose since he was sorta right
at the end...
