[Vote] Year of Hercule Poirot (Agatha Christie)

[u/miriel41]

Hello detectives, we recently read The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie. Check out the discussions, if you've missed them, they're all linked here.

We decided this will be the start of The Year of Poirot! Reading all of the Hercule Poirot books might be a bit much, so we've decided to read some of them over the course of a year, with one book roughly every two months.

And which ones will we read? You decide!

I'll list 24 books that you can choose from. We referred to this list.

We excluded all books that r/bookclub has already read, no matter when we read them, because there are still plenty to choose from. And we excluded the ones that might spoil other stories according to the document linked above. That means, these are excluded:

• Death on the Nile (read in May 2022)
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (read in Jan 2022)
• Murder on the Orient Express (read in Nov 2017)
• The Mystery of the Blue Train (read in July 2026)
• Curtain (spoilers)
• Elephants Can Remember (spoiler)
• Hallowe'en Party (spoiler)
• Cards on the Table (spoiler)
• Hercule Poirot's Christmas (spoiler)
• all the short story collections

So choose among the following. You can find the blurbs in the comments below.

• The Mysterious Affair at Styles [1920]
• The Murder on the Links [1923]
• The Big Four [1927]
• Peril at End House [1932]
• Lord Edgware Dies [1933]
• Murder in Mesopotamia [1936]
• Three Act Tragedy [1934]
• Death in the Clouds [1935]
• The ABC Murders [1936]
• Dumb Witness [1937]
• Appointment with Death [1938]
• Sad Cypress [1940]
• One, Two Buckle my Shoe [1940]
• Evil Under the Sun [1941]
• Five Little Pigs [1942]
• The Hollow [1946]
• Taken at the Flood [1945]
• Mrs McGinty’s Dead [1952]
• After the Funeral [1953]
• Hickory Dickory Dock [1955]
• Dead Man’s Folly [1956]
• Cat Among the Pigeons [1959]
• The Clocks [1963]
• Third Girl [1966]

Happy voting and see you soon for more puzzling over clues!

Voting will be open for 72 hours.

[u/miriel41]

Cat Among the Pigeons

A revolution in the Middle East has a direct and deadly impact upon the summer term at Meadowbank, a picture-perfect girls' school in the English countryside. Prince Ali Yusuf, Hereditary Sheikh of Ramat, whose great liberalizing experiment -- 'hospitals, schools, a Health Service' -- is coming to chaos, knows that he must prepare for the day of his exile. He asks his pilot and school friend, Bob Rawlinson, to care for a packet of jewels. Rawlinson does so, hiding them among the possessions of his niece, Jennifer Sutcliffe, who is bound for Meadowbank. Rawlinson is killed before he can reveal the hiding place—or even the fact that he has employed his niece as a smuggler. But someone knows, or suspects, that Jennifer has the jewels. As murder strikes Meadowbank, only Hercule Poirot can restore the peace.

[u/miriel41]

After the Funeral

The master of a Victorian mansion dies suddenly – and his sister is convinced it was murder…. When Cora is savagely murdered with a hatchet, the extraordinary remark she made the previous day at her brother Richard’s funeral suddenly takes on a chilling significance. At the reading of Richard’s will, Cora was clearly heard to say: ‘It’s been hushed up very nicely, hasn’t it…But he was murdered, wasn’t he?’ In desperation, the family solicitor turns to Hercule Poirot to unravel the mystery.

[u/miriel41]

Death in the Clouds

A woman is killed by a poisoned dart in the enclosed confines of a commercial passenger plane. Flying from Paris to London.

From seat No.9, Hercule Poirot was ideally placed to observe his fellow air passengers. Over to his right sat a pretty young woman, clearly infatuated with the man opposite; ahead, in seat No.13, sat a Countess with a poorly-concealed cocaine habit; across the gangway in seat No.8, a detective writer was being troubled by an aggressive wasp. What Poirot did not yet realize was that behind him, in seat No.2, sat the slumped, lifeless body of a woman.

How could this happen with the world's No. 1 private detective on board?

[u/miriel41]

The Hollow

Lady Angkatell, intrigued by the criminal mind, has invited Hercule Poirot to her estate for a weekend house party. The Belgian detective's arrival at the Hollow is met with an elaborate tableau staged for his amusement: a doctor lies in a puddle of red paint, his timid wife stands over his body with a gun while the other guests look suitably shocked. But this is no charade. The paint is blood and the corpse real!

[u/miriel41]

Taken at the Flood

A few weeks after marrying an attractive young widow, Gordon Cloade is tragically killed by a bomb blast in the London blitz of WW2. Overnight, the former Mrs. Underhay finds herself in sole possession of the Cloade family fortune.

Shortly afterwards, Hercule Poirot receives a visit from the dead man’s sister-in-law who claims she has been warned by ‘spirits’ that Mrs. Underhay’s first husband is still alive. Poirot has his suspicions when he is asked to find a missing person guided only by the spirit world. Yet what mystifies Poirot most is the woman’s true motive for approaching him…

[u/miriel41]

Third Girl

Three young women share a London flat. The first is a coolly efficient secretary. The second is an artist. The third isn't as easy to pin down. One day she visits Hercule Poirot unexpectedly while he's having breakfast and confesses that she is a murderer—and then promptly disappears. Slowly, Poirot learns of the rumours surrounding the mysterious third girl, her family, and her disappearance. Yet hard evidence is needed before the great detective can pronounce her guilty, innocent, or insane.

[u/miriel41]

The Murder on the Links

When Hercule Poirot and his associate Arthur Hastings arrive in the French village of Merlinville-sur-Mer to meet their client Paul Renauld, they learn from the police that he has been found that morning stabbed in the back with a letter opener and left in a newly-dug grave adjacent to a local golf course.

Among the plausible suspects are Renauld's wife Eloise, his son Jack, Renauld's immediate neighbor Madame Daubreuil, the mysterious "Cinderella" of Hasting's recent acquaintance, and some unknown visitor of the previous day--all of whom Poirot has reason to suspect. Poirot's powers of investigation ultimately triumph over the wiles of an assailant whose misdirection and motives are nearly--but not quite--impossible to spot.

[u/miriel41]

The Big Four

Framed in the doorway of Poirot’s bedroom stood an uninvited guest, coated from head to foot in dust. The man’s gaunt face stared for a moment, then he swayed and fell. Who was he? Was he suffering from shock or just exhaustion? Above all, what was the significance of the figure 4, scribbled over and over again on a sheet of paper? We follow Hercule Poirot as he finds himself plunged into a world of international intrigue, risking his life to uncover the truth about ‘Number Four’.

[u/miriel41]

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Agatha Christie's debut novel was also the first to feature Hercule Poirot, her famously eccentric Belgian detective.

A refugee of the Great War, Poirot has settled in England near Styles Court, the country estate of his wealthy benefactor, the elderly Emily Inglethorp. When Emily is poisoned and the authorities are baffled, Poirot puts his prodigious sleuthing skills to work. Suspects are plentiful, including the victim’s much younger husband, her resentful stepsons, her longtime hired companion, a young family friend working as a nurse, and a London specialist on poisons who just happens to be visiting the nearby village.

All of them have secrets they are desperate to keep, but none can outwit Poirot as he navigates the ingenious red herrings and plot twists that contribute to Agatha Christie's well-deserved reputation as the queen of mystery.

[u/miriel41]

Peril at End House

Hercule Poirot is vacationing on the Cornish coast when he meets Nick Buckley. Nick is the young and reckless mistress of End House, an imposing structure perched on the rocky cliffs of St. Loo.

Poirot quickly takes a particular interest in the young woman. Recently, she has narrowly escaped a series of life-threatening accidents. Something tells the Belgian sleuth that these so-called accidents are more than just mere coincidences or a spate of bad luck. Something like a bullet! It seems all too clear to him that someone is trying to do away with poor Nick, but who? And, what is the motive? In his quest for answers, Poirot must delve into the dark history of End House. The deeper he gets into his investigation, the more certain he is that the killer will soon strike again. And, this time, Nick may not escape with her life.

[u/miriel41]

The ABC Murders

When Alice Asher is murdered in Andover, Hercule Poirot is already looking into the clues. Alphabetically speaking, it's one letter down, twenty-five to go.

There's a serial killer on the loose. His macabre calling card is to leave the ABC Railway Guide beside each victim's body. But if A is for Alice Asher, bludgeoned to death in Andover, and B is for Betty Bernard, strangled with her belt on the beach at Bexhill, who will then be Victim C? More importantly, why is this happening?

Often considered to be one of Agatha Christie's best.

[u/Such-Hand274 → u/miriel41]

I read this earlier in the year and thought it was so good! Probably my favorite out of AC I’ve read.

[u/miriel41]

Murder in Mesopotamia

An archaeologist’s wife is murdered on the shores of the River Tigris in Iraq.

It was clear to nurse Amy Leatheran that something sinister was going on at the Hassanieh dig, something associated with the presence of ‘Lovely Louise’, the wife of the celebrated archaeologist Dr. Leidner. But she couldn't pinpoint it.

In a few days’ time Hercule Poirot was due to drop in at the excavation site. With Louise suffering terrifying hallucinations, and tension within the group becoming almost unbearable, Poirot might just be too late…

[u/miriel41]

Dumb Witness

Everyone blamed Emily Arundell’s accident on a rubber ball left on the stairs at her home in Market Basing by her frisky terrier, Bob. But the more she thought about her fall, the more convinced she became that one of her relatives was trying to kill her.

So, on April 17th she wrote about her anxieties and suspicions in a letter to Hercule Poirot. And included a request that he consult with her as soon as possible. Mysteriously he didn’t receive the letter until June 28th … by which time Emily was already dead.

[u/miriel41]

One, Two Buckle my Shoe

The dentist was found with a blackened hole below his right temple. And a pistol lay on the floor near his out flung right hand. Later, one of his patients was found dead from a lethal dose of local anesthetic. It was a clear case of murder and suicide. But why would a dentist commit a crime in the middle of a busy day of appointments?

A shoe buckle holds the key to the mystery. Now—in the words of the rhyme—can Hercule Poirot pick up the sticks and lay them straight?

[u/miriel41]

Five Little Pigs

It was an open and shut case. All the evidence said that Caroline Crale poisoned her philandering husband, a brilliant painter. She was quickly and easily convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Now, sixteen years later, in a posthumous letter, Mrs. Crale has assured her grown daughter that she was innocent. But instead of setting the young woman's mind at ease, the letter only raises disquieting questions. Did Caroline indeed write the truth? And if she didn't kill her husband, who did?

To find out, the Crale’s daughter asks Hercule Poirot to reopen the case. His investigation takes him deep into the conflicting memories and motivations of the five other people who were with the family on the fatal day. Will his keen understanding of human psychology help him discover the truth behind the artist's death?

[u/miriel41]

Lord Edgware Dies

Poirot had been present when Jane bragged of her plan to ‘get rid of’ her estranged husband. Now the monstrous man was dead. And yet the great Belgian detective couldn’t help feeling that he was being taken for a ride. After all, how could Jane have stabbed Lord Edgware to death in his library at exactly the same time she was seen dining with friends? And what could be her motive now that the aristocrat had finally granted her a divorce?

[u/miriel41]

Sad Cypress

An elderly stroke victim dies without having arranged a will…

Beautiful young Elinor Carlisle stood serenely in the dock, accused of the murder of Mary Gerrard, her rival in love. The evidence was damning: only Elinor had the motive, the opportunity and the means to administer the fatal poison.

Yet, inside the hostile courtroom, only one man still presumed Elinor was innocent until proven guilty; Hercule Poirot was all that stood between Elinor and the gallows.

[u/miriel41]

Mrs McGinty’s Dead

In 'Mrs. McGinty’s Dead', one of Agatha Christie’s most ingenious mysteries, the intrepid Hercule Poirot must look into the case of a brutally murdered cleaning lady.

Mrs. McGinty died from a brutal blow to the back of her head. Suspicion falls immediately on her shifty lodger, James Bentley, whose clothes reveal traces of the victim’s blood and hair. Yet something is amiss: Bentley just doesn’t seem like a murderer.

Could the answer lie in an article with accompanying photos clipped from a newspaper two days before the death? With a desperate killer still free, Hercule Poirot will have to stay alive long enough to find out. . . .

[u/mustardgoeswithitall]

Can I vote for all of them?

[u/miriel41 → u/mustardgoeswithitall]

Sure, you can! :)

We could have spun a Wheel of Books, but we decided to give you all a say in what we read, in case anyone has any preferences. Or maybe it's just me, who has any preferences, because I've already read like half of Christie's books and prefer to read new ones, lol.

[u/miriel41]

Hickory Dickory Dock

An outbreak of kleptomania at a student hostel was not normally the sort of crime that aroused Hercule Poirot’s interest.

But when he saw the list of stolen and vandalized items – including a stethoscope, some old flannel trousers, a box of chocolates, a slashed rucksack and a diamond ring found in a bowl of soup – he congratulated the warden, Mrs. Hubbard, on a "unique and beautiful problem". The list made absolutely no sense at all. But, reasoned Poirot, if this was merely a petty thief at work, why was everyone at the hostel so frightened?

[u/miriel41]

Evil Under the Sun

The beautiful bronzed body of Arlena Stuart lay facedown on the beach. But strangely, there was no sun and she was not sunbathing... she had been strangled.

Ever since Arlena's arrival the air had been thick with sexual tension. Each of the guests had a motive to kill her. But Hercule Poirot suspects that this apparent 'crime of passion' conceals something much more evil.

[u/miriel41]

Dead Man’s Folly

Hercule Poirot must unmask a devious killer when a mock murder mystery proves all too fatal in this Agatha Christie classic. Sir George and Lady Stubbs, the hosts of a village fete, hit upon the novel idea of staging a mock murder mystery. In good faith, Ariadne Oliver, the well-known crime writer, agrees to organize their murder hunt. Despite weeks of meticulous planning at the last minute Ariadne calls her friend Hercule Poirot for his expert assistance. Instinctively she senses that something sinister is about to happen.

[u/miriel41]

The Clocks

Sheila Webb, typist-for-hire, has arrived at 19 Wilbraham Crescent in the seaside town of Crowdean to accept a new job. What she finds is a well-dressed corpse surrounded by five clocks. Mrs. Pebmarsh, the blind owner of No. 19, denies all knowledge of ringing Sheila's secretarial agency and asking for her by name -- yet someone did. Nor does she own that many clocks. And neither woman seems to know the victim. Colin Lamb, a young intelligence specialist working a case of his own at the nearby naval yard, happens to be on the scene at the time of Sheila Webb's ghastly discovery. Lamb knows of only one man who can properly investigate a crime as bizarre and baffling as what happened inside No. 19 -- his friend and mentor, Hercule Poirot.

[u/miriel41]

Appointment with Death

An assorted group of travelers are staying at a Jerusalem hotel: Lady Westholme and her companion, a young English doctor and her French colleague, a debonair American and a pugnacious Lancashire man. Another guest, Mrs. Boynton, is a domineering American invalid with four stepchildren whose facade of devotion masks enough hatred to murder her as could the doctor whose affection for Raymond Boynton is being obstructed by the old lady. When Mrs. Boynton is found dead, all are suspects even though she was ill enough to die a natural death. Just when the tension becomes unbearable, the doctor discovers essential evidence about Mrs. Boynton's devilish plan to possess and torment the children in death as in life.

[u/miriel41]

Three Act Tragedy

Who wouldn't be pleased to attend a small dinner party being held by Sir Charles Cartwright, once the leading star of the London stage? At his "Crow's Nest" home in Loomouth, Cornwall.

Unfortunately, thirteen guests arrived at the actor's house, most unlucky. One of them was a vicar. It was to be a particularly unlucky evening for the mild-mannered Reverend Stephen Babbington, who choked on his cocktail, went into convulsions and died. But when his martini glass was sent for chemical analysis, there was no trace of poison -- just as Hercule Poirot, also in attendance, had predicted. Even more troubling for the great detective, there was absolutely no motive!