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As Usual the original review can be found on my Blog at -

Time for a shameful admission , 'I have never read any Agatha Christie books , till now'



In my defense, I have no friends or family who read books , and well I started reading with the big fantasies first .

But on the plus side , I have NOT read any Agatha Christie books , so... you know... I can look forward to my future being filled with her many great books .


What I Liked:



Now , Just to let you know , although I haven't read any of Agatha Christie's work before reading this book , I did grow up watching a few episodes of the Hercule Poirot TV shows . This book here introduces us to the titular, eccentric , Belgian detective - Hercule Poirot.

The book is narrated from the perspective of Hastings, a friend of Hercule Poirot , who is writing an account of the whole story following the notoriety it received . Hastings writes the tale detailing how he was introduced in the styles manor , how he met the various suspect to the eventual murder mystery that was created and how he in turn later introduced Hercule Poirot ,to the members/suspects of the Styles Manor

The story has all the elements of a classic murder mystery with a very interesting murder scene .This had the added flavour of Poirot focusing on his skills of observation and logical deductions to solve the case in very much similar to another famous fictional detective - Sherlock Holmes , and If you liked the famous lanky detective from Baker Street , you are going to love Poirot who is more eccentric , jolly and funny .

The narration being done from the perspective of Hastings is also quite interesting as Hastings turns out to be a very unreliable narrator ,and because of this we never find out the workings of Poirot's brain but rather we keep seeing the events transpire from Hastings view and those in turn led to portrayal of each and every character as a possible person of interest in the story .



What I Didn't Like:



One of my biggest complaints after reading this book was the character of Hastings , as a narrator his job is to be the obvious dumb guy who keeps the readers confused and act as a decoy to throw the suspecting readers away from the trails of the main culprit . But doing so Hastings comes across as a very gullible , proud , and simply annoying character. His attempts to work as a decoy sometimes made me as a reader roll my eyes as some of his assumptions and attempts to play detective were very obvious decoys . This in turn leads to a very irritable reading experience .

Meanwhile despite the plot being riveting and the pace being quick , the finale really scuppered the experience for me . It's one thing to not be able to guess the main culprit but the end felt like unnecessary twisting of the story countless times just to come across as unpredictable. It felt like a stretching conclusion and basically the culprits revelation felt like unnecessarily making an easy solution more problematic .



Conclusions :

As a whole , it was a decent book , and had its moment , both good and bad . In the end I can definitely recommend this book for short and quick paced read. However I feel like the reputation of Hercule Poirot and Agatha Christie is more of a reason for me to go ahead and read the subsequent books in the series rather than the actual substance in this pilot book of the series .