Poirot's Early Cases (1974)

Agatha Christie's short stories are usually very easy to digest and the eighteen of them in this book is no exception. As hinted by in the review, this is early stories, and combined with being short stories mean that they lack in depth. On the other hand they are each interesting small and amusing puzzles so I don't miss the depth at all.

A nice book to have by the bed, for consumption one short story at a time. ( )

A lovely collection of Poirot short stories – published in periodicals early in Christie’s career – which provided much of the grist for the early episodes of "Agatha Christie’s Poirot".

Aided by Hastings, Inspector Japp and the sublime Miss Lemon, Poirot investigates a vast array of cases including murder, kidnapping, theft, espionage and extortion. Hercule Poirot isn’t best represented by his short stories, but there are quite a few clever tales in this collection, and indeed the book is immensely readable. Notable stories are, unsurprisingly, also the ones that I enjoyed most from the television adaptation. "The Double Clue" introduces Vera Rossakoff, a woman of dubious morals who has a brief liaison with Poirot, and who would return in two novels cobbled from short stories, in increasingly unlikely situations. "The Chocolate Box" is the only glimpse we get of Poirot during his days in Belgium before the War.

"Poirot’s Early Cases" is a diverting read, but it’s fair to say that her shorter works – with a central pairing which often mimics the dynamic of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson – were more of a training ground for her more intricately plotted later novels.

Poirot ranking: 21st out of 38 ( )

This collection illustrates very well what is meant by the term "a cozy mystery." The stories in this book are like little puzzles, and they are a pleasure to read. Poirot is strong here, exercising his "little grey cells." I found it interesting that there are a couple of stories where Captain Hastings is not present. In the last story, we meet Poirot's secretary, Miss Lemon, who is passionate about filing systems but not so much about human interaction. The collection featured a story I had read before, the one about the Veiled Lady. I can't recall where I read it, likely in some other anthology, but it was nice rereading it in this collection. The neat thing about the book, for me, is that the stories were short. This makes for a nice sampler, and if you really like Poirot, it may encourage you to seek out the longer novels featuring the Belgian (not French, get it right) detective. In addition, for me, I find the time period where the tales take place, right after World War I and into the 20s, to be a fascinating time period, and Christie captures it well. Even something as simple as traveling by train, which we can't imagine as much today (certainly not in the U.S.) seems very romantic in Christie's work. Overall, this was a nice leisurely read for me. ( )

This title brings together 18 cases, and consisted of short stories I had mainly read in other collections. However I do not appear to have read Problem at Sea under that title.
It was originally called Poirot and the Crime in the Cabin and was not published till 1936.

The other 17 stories very largely first appeared in magazines in 1923, 1924, 1925, and 1928, 1929, and 1932. Here is a set of links in Wikipedia.
You can also find them on my list of 155 short stories

1 Plot summaries
1.1 The Affair at the Victory Ball
1.2 The Adventure of the Clapham Cook
1.3 The Cornish Mystery
1.4 The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly
1.5 The Double Clue
1.6 The King of Clubs
1.7 The Lemesurier Inheritance
1.8 The Lost Mine
1.9 The Plymouth Express
1.10 The Chocolate Box
1.11 The Submarine Plans
1.12 The Third Floor Flat
1.13 Double Sin
1.14 The Market Basing Mystery
1.15 Wasps' Nest
1.16 The Veiled Lady
1.17 Problem at Sea
1.18 How Does Your Garden Grow?

The narrator in all of the stories is Captain Hastings and between them they create a history of his connection with Poirot both before World War One and after the war. ( )

This is a collection of 18 short stories which had previously been collected in other editions. As usual in collections, the quality varies from story to story. There are kidnappings, a spy story, and more usual murder mysteries.
Several plot lines presented here are used to advantage in full length murder mysteries. All sorts of devices are used: mistaken identity, the client as the criminal, the least obvious person—a Christie trademark.
Most of the stories are told by Hastings, who is truly a very nice man. It’s fun to see Poirot use his “foreignness” to bamboozle people into thinking that he’s a bit dim.
Among my favorites are Wasps Nest, Problem at Sea, The Veiled Lady (lifted from a Holmes story), and The Adventure of the Clapham Cook. ( )