

These are just the novels Poirot also appears in this period in a play, Black Coffee, 1930, and two collections of short stories, Poirot Investigates, 1924, and Murder in the Mews, 1937. Murders, 1936 12) Murder in Mesopotamia, 1936 13) Cards on the Table, 1936 14) Dumb Witness, 1937 and 15) Death on the Nile, 1937. Librarian's note: the first fifteen novels in the Hercule Poirot series are 1) The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920 2) The Murder on the Links, 1923 3) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926 4) The Big Four, 1927 5) The Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928 6) Peril at End House, 1932 7) Lord Edgware Dies, 1933 8) Murder on the Orient Express, 1934 9) Three Act Tragedy, 1935 10) Death in the Clouds, 1935 11) The A.B.C. 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.Ĭontains a character key, a detailed biography, and an illustrated list of notable Poirot portrayals.


It was translated to English in 2007 and published by Harper Collins.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.Īmong 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. The novel was filmed for television with David Suchet as Poirot in 1996 and in 2003 the graphic novel adaptation was published in France by Emmanuel Proust editions. John Moffatt starred as Poirot in the BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of 1990. He says of the real case of the serial wife-killer George Joseph Smith: "he obeyed the common dictates of human nature, arguing that what had once succeeded would succeed again, and he paid the penalty of his lack of originality." Poirot is in his element on this case, revealing that human nature is always repetitive. The plot has peculiar complications and the reader will have to be very astute indeed if he guesses who the criminal is until the last complexity has been unravelled.Īs Laura Thompson writes in her biography of Christie's life, Murder on the Links was "very French." Agatha Christie had always been influenced by French crime writers (specifically, Gaston Leroux, author of The Mystery of the Yellow Room and The Phantom of the Opera) and this story shows some marked differences in tone and style from the novels published on either side of it.
