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Hartastic t1_j1toucf wrote

Reply to comment by Iatroblast in The simple greatness of Agatha Christie by -something_something

Mysterious Affair at Styles is one of the weaker Poirots, IMHO (also the first, so, maybe fair), although having read it pays off a bit if you ever make it as far as Curtain, which is the last Poirot and I think hits differently if you've read most of the other Poirots before it, especially the ones that include Hastings.

A few others I liked not on your list that I liked: Cards on the Table, Five Little Pigs, Death on the Nile.

The only one of the Poirot books in my opinion that is really bad is The Big Four, and maybe even that is just because it wasn't what I wanted. It's... basically a James Bond novel, written a generation before there were James Bond novels, except instead of James Bond as the international super spy it's... Poirot for some reason.

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Iatroblast t1_j1utq4f wrote

Nice that’s good to hear. I read Styles after a hiatus of many years and felt pretty deflated about Christie, who I had previously enjoyed. Then I read the Moving Finger and it was a little better, still not very good, but it was my first Marple story and she was hardly in it at all!

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Hartastic t1_j1ux02q wrote

Is Moving Finger the one where Miss Marple doesn't show up until like 70% of the way through the book?

I don't mind Miss Marple as a character but sometimes it does feel like Christie has to contrive a bit to justify why she needs to / can solve a mystery. Poirot, at least, was this famous former professional police officer / detective.

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