Review: Poirot Investigates

Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Like most collections, this has stronger and weaker stories.

Poirot is, throughout, impressed with his own cleverness. Hastings is, throughout, unaware of his own ineptitude.

I read the Gutenberg version, which is the British version with 11 stories (there were a couple more in the American edition, published later).

The Adventure of “The Western Star”: A jewel theft with a twist, that invokes the good old "stolen jeweled eyes of an idol" trope so beloved of pulp writers (and also used by Conan Doyle), only to subvert it.
The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor: A suicide, or is it? Poirot is commissioned by the insurance company to check.
The Adventure of the Cheap Flat: I found this one a bit unlikely. (view spoiler)[A criminal couple have rented a flat under the name of Robinson. When they discover that rival criminals are after them with assassination in mind, they rather coldly advertise the flat at a cheap rent until they attract a couple whose name actually is Robinson, with the idea that the assassins will kill them and think they've dealt with the issue. Fortunately for the Robinsons, they are friends of Hastings, and he mentions the oddity of the cheap flat to Poirot, who, characteristically, leaps to a correct conclusion. (hide spoiler)]
The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge: A man is shot by a mysterious home invader - or is he?
The Million Dollar Bond Robbery: I suspected the solution to this one, though not how it was worked.
The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb: Even prior to her marriage to an archaeologist (in 1930, whereas this collection came out in 1924), Christie was apparently interested in the subject, as I'm sure many people were, following the excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamen. Here, she plays with superstition around curses on tombs, another pulp trope that she debunks through Poirot.
Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan: This was rather clever, as was Poirot's approach to working it out.
The Kidnapped Prime Minister: Probably inspired by the Conan Doyle stories like "A Scandal in Bohemia" or "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans," where the Great Detective is involved in secret high-level shenanigans that don't come out to the public (at least, not until the faithful chronicler reveals them). Another clever twist, where Poirot sees through a carefully crafted illusion.
The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim: Again reminds me of a Conan Doyle story: (view spoiler)[The one where a respectable man has a second identity as a ragged beggar, and "disappears" because his beggar identity has been arrested. (hide spoiler)]
The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman: A lesson always to suspect evidence from only one source.
The Case of the Missing Will: there's a story very like this in one of the Dorothy L. Sayers short story collections, where a deceased relative has hidden a will as a test of the legatee's intelligence and they call in detectives to solve it for them. That's called out as a cheat here (by Hastings, of course), and I have to say I agree, though Poirot maintains that intelligence includes knowing when to consult an expert.

There's a common thread of "things are not as they have been carefully arranged to appear, and only Poirot suspects the truth" running through these stories. Some of the twists are very clever, though at least one I considered a bit far-fetched. Overall, an amusing set of puzzles.

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