An anonymous letter informs Elinor Carlisle that an interloper is, as the letter’s author warns, “sucking up to” Elinor’s wealthy Aunt Laura to usurp Elinor’s position as heir of Laura’s estate. Elinor suspects the alleged rival to be her childhood playmate Mary Gerrard. But when Mary is murdered with morphine poisoning, Elinor must rely on Hercule Poirot to prove her innocence and save her life. The Story In Sad Cypress Elinor Carlisle and Roddy Welman are cousins by marriage, but not blood, and have an understanding that they will marry someday. They are also the only known heirs to the esta ..read more

“Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” ~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth When Hercule Poirot is invited to Colonel Johnson’s home for the Christmas holidays, he expects to spend a few days relaxing in Johnson’s drafty old cottage. What he gets, though, is an investigation into the brutal murder of millionaire Simeon Lee. The Story In Hercule Poirot’s Christmas Poirot is spending the Christmas holidays with his friend, Colonel Johnson when Johnson is called to the home of Simeon Lee. Lee, who is a multimillionaire, had invited his four adult children and his one ..read more

 “You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?” When the vacationing Hercule Poirot overhears a man asking this question of an unseen hotel guest late one evening, he pays it no mind, dismissing it as the kind of fanciful question a novelist or playwright might ask. But Raymond Boynton is no novelist and his target is not some character in a play. No, the person who’s “got to be killed” is his own mother. The Story In Appointment With Death While vacationing in Jerusalem, Poirot overhears a man outside his hotel window ask, “You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed ..read more

When a fellow passenger is murdered on Poirot’s flight from Paris to London, he’s (mostly) content to let Chief Inspector Japp handle it. But when he overhears a stranger muse that he, himself, might have murdered Madame Giselle–what with Poirot being a foreigner and all–he takes on the case and vows to clear his name. The Story In Death In The Clouds Poirot books a midday flight from Paris to London with 10 other passengers and 2 crew members in his cabin. The passengers include a father-and-son archeology team, a hairdresser who spent her contest winnings on a short vacation, a novelist, a b ..read more

Every good fan of English cozy mysteries knows better than to have 13 guests around the dining room table. It’s just too bad no one told poor Lord Edgware. The Story In Lord Edgware Dies After an evening at the theater, Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings are enjoying a meal and watching the various people filter by. Moments later they are approached by the actress Jane Wilkinson, who tries to convince Poirot to intercede with her husband and encourage him to grant her a divorce. She has, Wilkinson explains, fallen in love with the Duke of Merton and plans to marry him next. Poirot reluctantly ..read more

What could possibly be better than a Poirot mystery? How about a Poirot mystery in which he teams up with 3 other beloved Agatha Christie characters? The Story In Cards On The Table At a hospital fundraiser, Poirot meets a man known only as Mr. Shaitana. Shaitana, who dresses in a manner clearly intended to evoke images of Méphistophélès, taunts Poirot with claims of his own impressive collection–but his “collection” is of people who’ve gotten away with murder. Shaitana invites Poirot to dinner in his home to study them. He also challenges Poirot to work out which of the “collection” are actua ..read more

While on a seaside vacation in Cornwall, Hercule Poirot meets a beautiful, if somewhat clueless, young woman who lives in her ancestral home nearby. But something sinister lurks in this coastal paradise–and it threatens the young woman’s very life. The Story In Peril At End House Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings are on vacation at the coast when they meet a young woman named Magdala “Nick” Buckley. Immediately it becomes obvious that her safety–and perhaps her life–is in danger. There’s a mysterious rockslide that barely misses her, a problem with her car’s brakes, a large painting that fall ..read more

I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful, a fairy’s child; Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild. So goes La Belle Dame Sans Merci, an 1819 ballad by John Keats. But when a real-life “beautiful lady without mercy” is terrorized (and murdered) at her husband’s archeological dig, it’s Poirot–and not a knight in shining armor–on the case. The Story In Murder In Mesopotamia Nurse Amy Leatheran travels to Iraq to work as personal nurse to Louise Leidner, who seems to be suffering from severe anxiety. Louise’s husband, Eric, is head archeologist on a dig and the Leidners liv ..read more

The Mystery of the Blue Train is another book written by Agatha Christie as she struggled to cope with the death of her mother and the extramarital affair of (and separation from) her husband–and she reportedly struggled every day with it. Even the “shortcut” of reworking a previously published short story wasn’t enough to save the novel in her opinion. She “always hated it”, according to the Christie Estate, and dedicated the finished book to her daughter’s dog and her governess in a not-so-subtle jab at the people whom she felt had abandoned her when she needed their support. The Story In Th ..read more

Agatha Christie called her 1927 novel The Big Four “that rotten book” and one she felt financially (and, I would imagine, creatively) pressured to produce. Critics of the day were not kind, with one describing the novel as “more like an exaggerated parody” of detective stories. The Story In The Big Four Arthur Hastings in back in England on an extended business trip and visits his old friend Poirot to find his friend packing for a move to South America. Poirot is relocating, he explains, because he has been hired by a wealthy businessman named Abe Ryland, believed to be the richest man in the ..read more