An enjoyable collection of eighteen short stories featuring Poirot (and often narrated by Captain Hastings), primarily published in magazines in the 1920s and 1930s. These are light, fun and a quick read. They have the flavour of their era, and most have been adapted for television. Several contained the kernels of later novels and novellas (Market Basing Mystery / Murder in the News, How does your garden grow / Dumb Witness, Problem at sea / Death on the Nile). A good introduction to Poirot, or a nice reacquaintance with an old friend. ( )

Un compendio de dieciocho relatos de las aventuras del famoso y peculiar detective belga. Desde "La caja de bombones" con un Poirot todavía residente en Bélgica, y por tanto, en la cronoficción, anterior a la Primera Guerra Mundial, pasando por un círculo de narraciones de la primera etapa londinense hasta otros casos de época posterior, cuando ya famoso, dispone de la eficiente y perfeccionista secretaria, Miss Lemon.

A nice collection of Hercule Poirot short stories featuring both Hugh Fraser (Capt. Hastings) and David Suchet (H. Poirot) reading the stories in turn. Humor and thrilling well mixed. Enjoyable. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )