Poirot Investigates

Someone has amended the text of this kindle book. The grammar is ridiculous and includes a mention of c programming. Amazon needs to look into quality control.

It’s very odd, but it appears that someone took a thesaurus and replaced words all throughout the book. I actually have another Agatha Christie Poirot collection with almost all the same stories and I started comparing the two. Ex: in one story the sentence reads “My old uncle in Scotland died unexpectedly and left me some money.” But in Poirot Investigates, the same sentence reads, “My antique uncle in Scotland died and left me a few cash.” It’s pretty funny, but it really drove me nuts. I recommend “Agatha Christie The Collection.” It has many of the same stories and they are written correctly!

Poirot Investigates is a collection of 14 short mysteries starring Agatha Christie\’s most famous detective, Hercule Poirot. From a chronological sense, this is the third book in the Hercule Poirot series — the one before her most critically acclaimed mystery — The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The challenge with short stories is that it is almost impossible for an author to maintain a consistent quality. It is even more difficult with mysteries since you also have to develop a crime, introduce clues for the astute reader, and then have the detective solve it. Needles to say emotion or character development is at the bottom of most short stories\’ ability to deliver. Poirot Investigates unfortunately falls victim to that dilemma. The main problem of the book is the quality of the 14 stories. About a third remain great reads with just enough clues to make the reader feel good about keeping up with Poirot. Another third are gimmicks with no real chance of the reader to follow-on with the detective. The final third are dated and rely on knowledge that was likely common in the early 1920s but is no longer common knowledge. There is no real character development — for both Poirot and the various protagonists and antagonists he encounters pursuing each mystery. You can see the genesis of greater Christie novels in these stories. Short stories are hard — and collections even more so. While some of the stories remain riveting – too many are gimmicky or dated. I can recommend this if you want to read the entire Hercule Poirot series – otherwise there are better Hercule books to spend your time on.

The Table of Contents seems to include just about all the Poirot short stories I have heard of, including the twelve Adventures of Hercule”. They may be included in the table of contents, but less than half of the stories are available; if the title isn’t in blue with underlining, it is not accessible.

I have no problem with Agatha Christie. In fact I really enjoy her books. However, this edition had so many grammar and sentence construction issues that it seemed like a translation back to English from some very foreign language. We had the same problem with another Christie book, The Man in the Brown Suit. From now on. we always read a sample before purchasing, to make sure that the edition is what it should be. These two volumes are unacceptable.

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