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Side Note: In August last year, I reached a personal milestone of 1,000 books read so far in this decade with the first of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot series, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. With this second novel in the Hercule Poirot series, I have reached another personal milestone: 1,000 eBook reads on my eReader. One thing I can already see: since I bought my first eReader, I have definitely been reading more books than ever before �� and that is definitely a good thing! (PS �� my reading decades are tracked differently than most people track decades. I start with the ‘zero year�� and end with the ‘nine year�� �� in other words, for my reading purposes, this decade started for me in January 2010 and ends at the end of December this year, 2019.)

Captain Arthur Hastings chronicles this second novel in Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot series, just as he did in the first one. Poirot receives an urgent letter from a very wealthy man who says he is in fear of his life and desperately requires Poirot’s assistance. When Poirot and Hastings arrive, they are met with the news that the man was murdered in the ‘bunkair�� (as Poirot calls it) that was being built on a golf course under construction.

Of course, in real golf, landing one’s golf ball in a bunker filled with sand and a bank along one edge is definitely not a good thing as they are notoriously difficult to chip one’s way out of. In this case, landing in the ‘bunkair�� due to a stab in the back is, of course, far worse.

The plot in this novel rivals any that can be found in modern mystery writing. In fact, it not only rivals them, but in the majority of cases supersedes them substantially. It has been many years since I read some of Agatha Christie’s novels, and to be honest �� I don’t think I would recognize the ones I previously read after so many years have passed of life, experience, and reading.

Ms Christie’s characters may not be as strong, yet that is out of necessity. In each book, several characters have to be admitted to set the stage, disassemble it, re-set it, and so forth. It wouldn’t even be responsible of her as a writer to dramatize the characters beyond the extent that she does because I can’t imagine anything worse as a reader than to find a character I was really attached to turn into a criminal.

However, we have Hercule Poirot. He may be tiny with big flowing mustaches and an obsession with adjusting the position of various objects that look out of alignment to him. Still, if he is not physically the ultimate hero to warm up to, his brain and how it works to solve the unsolvable is a huge attraction. And, we have Captain Arthur Hastings �� young, dashing, and not nearly as swift to hone in on clues that his friend sees in seconds, he is still endearing in his efforts to keep up to the electrically-charged Poirot.

Although I have not been able to insert into my reading schedule as many Agatha Christie novels as I would like to, there are definitely more upcoming during the latter part of this year. I am so much looking forward to my further adventures with the incorrigible and daunting team of Poirot and Hastings.