Poirot Investigates / Agatha Christie

Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am not usually a fan of short stories, but I really enjoyed this collection of Hercule Poirot tales. They were published early in Dame Agatha's writing career and help us to get to know both M. Poirot and Captain Hastings. We get a good idea of their respective strengths and weaknesses and of the chemistry of their friendship.

These stories are Christie's laboratory where we can enjoy her experimenting with the detective & mystery tropes. She was obviously a student of Arthur Conan Doyle. Poirot and Hastings are her versions of Holmes and Watson, affectionate renditions of these famous characters. Indeed, she gives Poirot the ultimate in reason, but perhaps a deficiency in sympathy, while Hastings is all emotion with scant logic. Many of these short stories remind me of the Sherlock Holmes stories, but where Conan Doyle excelled at this format, it seems to have been just the first step toward a novel for Christie. Kind of a test kitchen, where she bakes a small test batch before committing herself to a larger baking frenzy.

Poor Hastings really suffers in these vignettes, thinking that he is so superior to Poirot, yet constantly bamboozled by the clues and distractions. Like Dr. Watson, there isn't a pretty woman who can't turn his head, especially if she has auburn hair! (But woe betide her if she has a brain, he loses interest immediately). Because he is tall, athletic, and English, he assumes he is better than the short, fussy foreigner. That's probably a situation that Christie ran into rather frequently in her travels.

But why, I asked myself, does Poirot put up with this silly man let alone treat him as a friend? My theory is that he is part of Poirot's camouflage. His concern with his clothing & shoes, his preferences for tisanes rather than “good English tea," and the presence of an obviously thick friend allow most people to underestimate the Belgian, leading them to reveal more to him than they would to an English investigator. As for Hastings, he is drawn to celebrity and success like a bee to honey. Poirot can make fun of Hasting's lack of imagination, but as long as Poirot is winning, Hastings will be at his side, trying to bask in the reflected glow.

My speculation is that the author was an introvert who spent a great deal of time quietly observing the people around her and using these observations to create believable characters who behave in understandable ways.



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