If you’re as excited as I am about the upcoming Agatha Christie adaptation, A Haunting in Venice—it’s Tina Fey!—then you’ve probably set to work dusting off your Hercule Poirot detective novels… or if you don’t have a stack of all thirty-three paperbacks, then you’re probably one of the forty people in line in front of me trying to get the audiobook of Hallowe’en Party through Libby.
I love to be apprised of the situation before I go to the theater. For example, this adaptation is the third-to-last installment of the Hercule Poirot novels, and it wasn’t published until 1969, which I find fascinating. So, for your reference, here are Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels, in order—with a brief synopsis to jog your memory.
Agatha Christie’s very first detective novel. She wrote it in 1916 during the middle of the Great War, and in it, Detective Hercule Poirot is settling as a Belgian refugee in England. When the lady of nearby Styles Court country estate, the elderly Mrs. Emily Inglethorp, is murdered, Poirot puts his sleuthing skills to work for the very first time.
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This third novel features Hercule Poirot, who has retired to a quiet village in England, was originally serialized as “Who Killed Roger Akyroyd?” in the London Evening News. When he happens upon the body of his friend Roger, it’s just as Roger is discovering that his first wife poisoned her cruel first husband, and before he could finish reading the letter with the final clue about his wife, Roger was stabbed to death. This book has been hailed as “Christie’s masterpiece” and was included in Howard Haycraft’s list of most influential crime novel ever written.
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A stranger shows up in the doorway of Hercule’s bedroom, covered in dust, and holding a sheet of paper covered in the number 4. He sways and falls, and Poirot finds himself in an international plot.
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There’s no cozy mystery like a cozy mystery on a train, and when the Blue Train arrives at Nice, Ruth Kettering won’t wake up. She’s been bludgeoned to death in her sleep, and her rubies are missing. Hercule Poirot reenacts the journey, from disembarking, through the murder, to arrival, to determine what exactly happened.
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Poirot encounters the beautiful Nick Buckley on the Cornish Riviera, where she describes so many accidental brushes with death that he believes she’s the target of a dedicated (if ineffective) killer….
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It’s true that we always think the spouse did it, but when Hercule Poirot himself overhears the estranged, actress wife of Lord Edgwarehas bragging about getting rid of him, even he is confused when Edgwarehas turns up dead at the same time he himself saw her out with her friends.
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Like I said: ain’t no mystery like a train mystery. If you haven’t read this mystery about the millionaire Samue Edward Ratchett, who was stabbed 12 times while the Orient Express was stalled by a snowdrift, well… you have to. Poirot has to find the killer among the passengers, just before it rolls into station. (If you haven’t seen the most recent adaptation, I definitely recommend it—the visuals and decadent luxury liner setting is absolutely decadent.)
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If you can’t have a murder mystery on a train, in the air is the next best option. In this novel, Poirot discovers the woman in seat No. 2 (that’s how they labeled airplane seats in ’35!) on the short flight from Paris to London has been murdered.
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Poirot shows up at an excavation site just in time for Louise, the wife of archaeologist Dr. Leidner, to experience terrifying hallucinations indicative of something more sinister….
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Poirot reluctantly accepts a bridge invitation from flamboyant party host, Mr. Shaitana. When he sees the host’s “private collection,” the situation escalates into a game much more dangerous than cards.
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When the elderly Emily Arundell first slipped and fell on a dog toy, she thought it was an accident, but she grew more paranoid that one of her relatives was trying to murder her, so she wrote to Hercule Poirot. Poirot receives her letter just after Emily’s death…
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Another stunning adaptation to film, in this mystery, Poirot’s on a Nile cruise when beautiful and rich Linnet Ridgeway is discovered with a fatal bullet wound in her head.
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Another thriller set in the Middle East—you know Christie’s husband was an archaeologist? Yeah, but we know who the real expert on all things is! In Petra, the worst woman in the world, Mrs. Boynton is found dead with only a tiny puncture wound on her wrist indicating her cause of death.
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When the Lee family’s patriarch has his throat slashed on Christmas Eve, Poirot finds that nearly every family member has a reason to hate the old man… but all of them seem to suspect each other, as well.
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Hercule hates going to the dentist as much as the next guy, but even more so when the dentist is dead in his own surgery within hours of Poirot’s appointment.
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It’s a murder mystery based on a nursery rhyme! Each of the five people suspected of killing Caroline Crale’s husband was at a different location at his time of death, the same as each of the “little piggies.”
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My favorite element of Agatha Christie’s novels is the settings—this one is at an English country manor. When Poirot arrives for lunch, there’s a man dripping his lifeblood into the swimming pool, and his wife stands over him holding the revolver.
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It seems like this one is the first dip into the supernatural element of the mystery novel—at least in the Hercule Poirot novel collection. Gordon Cloade was killed in the blitz just after marrying a young widow, who subsequently inherited his sizable fortune. Cloade’s sister-in-law tells Poirot, though, that Gordon is still alive. Spirits told her so.
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When Mrs. McGinty dies by bludgeoning, it seems obvious that her lodger did it. But it’s never that straightforward when you’re dealing with Christie and Poirot.
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At the funeral of her brother, the master of a Victorian mansion, Cora says, “He was murdered, wasn’t he?” and then she is murdered with a hatchet. The family lawyer is desperate, so he turns to Hercule Poirot for help.
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If you’re reading this list, you probably love a murder mystery dinner. Crime novelist Adriane Oliver gets a wary feeling while she organizes a mock murder for a town festival… and then the pretend murder victim is actually murdered. So she calls in her old friend (and ours), you know who.
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When the unpopular games mistress is shot through the heart at an exclusive girls’ school, one student is convinced she’ll be next without Poirot’s help.
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This is the one you’ve been awaiting: a teenage girl at a Halloween party, Joyce, tells the other partiers that she witnessed a murder. No one believes her, so she storms off home. But then, later, they find Joyce drowned to death in an apple-bobbing bucket. Poirot has to figure out not only who murdered Joyce, but what was the murder that Joyce claimed to have witnessed.
Ariadne Oliver (the novelist organizing the murder mystery in Dead Man’s Folly) is one of the partygoers, and she’s the one who calls in Poirot. In the new film adaptation, the title has been changed to A Haunting in Venice, and the location is transposed from England there, as well. I’m very much looking forward to the Gothic retelling.
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Poirot’s looking at the cold case of a triple death. The first was a woman at the foot of the cliff. The second and third, husband and wife, were shot dead nearby. How are they related? And who’s responsible?
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It’s his last case, and he’s back where he started, at the Styles estate. He’s become arthritic and immobile, and although he knows the identity of the serial killer nearby, he calls his old friend Captain Hastings for help.
Christie wrote this book during World War II as a present for her daughter in case she should not survive the bombings. The family kept it in a safe for thirty years before agreeing to publish it in 1975.
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