The New York Times: ‘Makes for uncommonly good reading.’
12. Death in the Clouds (1935)
From seat No. 9, Hercule Poirot is almost ideally placed to observe his fellow air travelers on this short flight from Paris to London. Over to his right sits a pretty young woman, clearly infatuated with the man opposite. Ahead, in seat No. 13, is the Countess of Horbury, horribly addicted to cocaine and not doing too good a job of concealing it. Across the gangway in seat No. 8, a writer of detective fiction is being troubled by an aggressive wasp. Yes, Poirot is almost ideally placed to take it all in—except that the passenger in the seat directly behind him has slumped over in the course of the flight…dead. Murdered. By someone in Poirot’s immediate proximity. And Poirot himself must number among the suspects.
Times Literary Supplement: ‘It will be a very acute reader who does not receive a complete surprise at the end.’
13. The ABC Murders (1936)
Captain Arthur Hastings returns to narrate this account of a personal challenge made to ‘Mr Clever Poirot’ by a killer who identifies himself as ‘ABC’ and who leaves the ABC Rail Guide next to his victims—apparently intending to work through the English countryside (he has struck in Andover, Bexhill-on-Sea, and Churston) and exercise Poirot along the way. Serialized in London’s Daily Express, The ABC Murders became a cultural phenomenon as readers were invited to try to keep up with the famous Belgian detective. It is a challenge that remains fresh and thrilling to this day—and makes The ABC Murders one of the absolute must-reads of the Christie canon.
Julian Symons: ‘A masterwork of carefully concealed artifice…most stunningly original.’
Sunday Times: ‘There is no more cunning player of the murder game than Agatha Christie.’
14. Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)
Nurse Amy Leatheran had never felt the lure of the ‘mysterious East,’ but she nonetheless accepts an assignment at Hassanieh, an ancient site deep in the Iraqi desert, to care for the wife of a celebrated archaeologist. Mrs Leidner is suffering bizarre visions and nervous terror. ‘I’m afraid of being killed!’ she admits to her nurse. Her terror, unfortunately, is anything but unfounded, and Nurse Leatheran is soon enough without a patient. The world’s greatest detective happens to be in the vicinity, however: having concluded an assignment in Syria, and curious about the dig at Hassanieh, Hercule Poirot arrives in time to lead a murder investigation that will tax even his remarkable powers—and in a part of the world that has seen more than its share of misadventure and foul play.
The New York Times: ‘Smooth, highly original, and completely absorbing.’
15. Cards on the Table (1936)
‘The deduction,’ Agatha Christie writes in her Foreword to this volume, ‘must…be entirely psychological…because when all is said and done it is the mind of the murderer that is of supreme interest.’ There is probably no neater encapsulation of what makes Agatha Christie’s works so fresh, so fascinating, so many years after they were written. And this statement appropriately opens the novel that is regarded as Agatha Christie’s most singularly challenging mystery—it is, in fact, Hercule Poirot’s own favourite case.
Poirot is one of eight dinner guests of the flamboyant Mr Shaitana. The other invitees are Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard (introduced in The Secret of Chimneys); Secret Service agent Colonel Race (who first appeared in The Man in the Brown Suit); Mrs Ariadne Oliver, a famous author of detective stories (introduced in Parker Pyne Investigates and who will figure in five more Poirots)—and four suspected murderers. After dinner, there will be a few rounds of bridge: the four investigators playing at one table; the four murder suspects at another. Mr Shaitana will sit by the fire and observe. This he does—until he is stabbed to death. The ultimate ‘closed-room murder mystery’ awaits the intrepid reader. Who is the murderer? And who will solve the crime?
Fair warning: Poirot casually reveals the solution to Murder on the Orient Express in Cards on the Table.
Daily Mail: ‘The finest murder story of her career…Mrs Christie has never been more ingenious.’
16. Murder in the Mews (1937)
In the title work in this collection of novellas, Poirot and Inspector Japp collaborate on the investigation of a suspicious suicide. The supernatural is said to play in the disappearance of top secret military plans in The Incredible Theft—an incredible claim, indeed, as Poirot will prove. The bullet that kills Gervase Chevenix-Gore shatters a mirror in Dead Man’s Mirror—just the clue Poirot needs to solve the crime. And, while basking on white Mediterranean sands, Poirot stares trouble in the face—the beautiful face of Valentine Chantry, now celebrating her fifth marriage—in Triangle at Rhodes.