REVIEW: The Early Cases of Hercule Poirot

The Early Cases of Hercule Poirot
Author: Agatha Christie

This book gathers 25 early Hercule Poirot short stories. Christie wrote these tales while on a around-the-world tour leading up to the British Empire Exposition. For those who want more information, a book about the 10-month tour in 1922, The Grand Tour, gives details of the trip, the people who traveled with Christie, and some of the sites/events that the group encountered. :)

I read the print version of this book while listening to the stories on audio. Poirot stories tend to contain a lot of French, so I decided to read and listen. That way I got to enjoy Poirot's French pronounced correctly...not the garbled mess I make of it in my head while reading silently. The audio book is narrated by Charles Armstrong. Armstrong reads at a nice pace and his voice is pleasant. He's not David Suchet....but does a fine job reading Poirot.

I enjoyed these stories. Most are very short, so other than the main characters -- Poirot, Hastings and Inspector Japp -- there really isn't much character development. But that's ok....the most important things are Poirot's investigations and his little grey cells. And those items are in these stories in abundance! Christie was quite skilled at fitting a nice little mystery into just a few pages.

I did have one problem with this collection. Some of the stories within are the original versions of tales that were later expanded and re-written into longer novellas. One such story, Christmas Adventure, was first published as a short story in 1923, but was later expanded into novella length in 1960. The expanded version changed character names and some plot modifications were made. This anthology is supposed to be the early stories about Hercule Poirot, but instead of including the original Christmas Adventure, the book includes the longer revamped version of the story, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding. I'm on a quest to read all of Christie's works in publication order.....so this change really tweeked my reading goal OCD. I got sucked down a rabbit hole chasing after Christmas Adventure. It was published as an ebook in 2014, but is now unavailable to purchase. It was included in one UK anthology in the 90's....which was published under another name (The Harlequin Tea Set) in the US....and the US version did not include Christmas Adventure. So finally I had to give up.....until I can purchase a used copy of the UK anthology (While the Light Lasts and Other Stories). I made due with The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding.....with only slight harrumphing.

I enjoyed the fact that the audio book gave the original publication date for each story at the beginning. And there wasn't a single story in the book that I didn't enjoy reading (even the pudding *smile*)

Great collection of Poirot mysteries! I had never read any of these stories before, so it was just awesome to read something "new'' by my favorite author!!