The end of Poirot.

And it ended. It ended on the 9th July 2014. The well blogged quest to read the 33 Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot novels, in a year. It didn't take a year. It took, coincidently, 33 weeks to achieve the goal I had set myself 52 weeks to achieve. I came in 19 weeks early! On average therefore, I managed 1 book a week. This is obviously not quite as it happened; How it happened is laid out in the below chart. It shows that I started gently and got very focused in the months of March, April & May. As you can see, I think I struggled with, 'Poirot Fatigue', in the month June. Finally polishing it off in early July. 

It has proved a highly enjoyable experience, if at times highly intense! When you submerge yourself in a character over a compressed period you really do befriend them and begin to understand how the, 'little grey cells' work.

So, what did I learn about, Poirot? Like, Inspector Morse. The literary character is far more gripping than the TV character. Mainly due to the medium of the longer novel being able to sketch deeper into the characters personality than any TV show is able to and which adapts the novel and then edits away (sometimes, brutally, any relation to the novel's plot). Poirot, in some ways, is remarkably less likeable in the novels, than David Suchet portrays him on TV. This was a surprise. Poirot is wickedly cruel to Captain Hastings in the novels, lambasting his almost elephantine stupidity and flights of imaginative guesswork, compared to the mind of, Poirot. He does this to most characters who have, inferior minds.

Another preconception I had, is that Captain Hastings, was, Poirot's sidekick for most of the time. In the TV shows he appears with, Poirot in 41 of the 49 episodes made (83% appearance). In the books, the appearance of Captain Hastings is, if anything, remarkably rare. He appears in the early works, narrating the stories (like Dr Watson does for Arthur Conan Doyle, in the Holmes novels). But then leaves for Argentina. He actually only appears in 7 of the first 14 novels (50%). He then doesn't return until the last novel, Curtain. He doesn't feature in 25 of the novels (25% appearance), Agatha Christie wrote. Captain Hastings had served his purpose early on and then seems to have been discarded by, Christie. 

In places, Captain Hastings, seems to have been replaced by a certain, Ariadne Oliver, (crime novelist/Christie-a-like). I was not overly fond of her I have to say as a character. A figure who I was unaware of, and again, a surprise to me as she appears in 6 Poirot novels (18%). Two less than Captain Hastings but oddly, in the TV adaptations, she appears in exactly 6 of the 49 episodes (12%). Thus proving the dominance of Captain Hastings in the TV format, though not the literary one, had created in my mind the idea that, Poirot only had Hastings as a sidekick of sorts. The books have re-written this preconception.

The last great surprise I found as I read the books, especially the later ones, with the Oliver character is the, at times, complete lack of Poirot, from the Poirot novel. Such a dominant character yet in some of the novels he can be there at the start & the finish but then for the entirety of the middle of the novel has only his shadow overhanging it, as for instance, Ariadne Oliver tramps around the scene or another protagonist gathers information for Poirot to disseminate later on. It seemed to me, that in the later books, Agatha Christie became confident enough to remove Poirot from direct action. This was quite brave on her part and some books I read you would class more as 'Ariadne Oliver' mysteries if you measured the quantity of type-print used on her.

Finally then; My conclusions.

Best Poirot Novel: Curtain (1940/1976) I would probably have said, ABC murders or Death on the Nile until I came to the last novel, Curtain. Curtain is my favourite because of its ultimate twist which turns the entire philosophy of, Hercule Poirot on its head and provides a brutal ending, though a compassionate one. He dies nobly I think, but certainly challenges the reader for obvious reasons.

Worst Poirot Novel:  The Third Girl (1966). As much as I tried I couldn't enjoy this book at all as much as any of the others. I had no sympathy for the characters, they could have all been murdered for me. I just didn't care for it, Sadly. 

Agatha Christie:  I apologise. She is perhaps one of the best storytellers I have read. Her early work is my favourite period as the pace of the storylines are rapid in nature and reveal an exceptionally agile mind. Her novels are also, due to the period of time covered from just after the great war to the 1970's encompasses some of the greatest social upheavel in the UK's history and a lot of this seeps into her novels so you find yourself not only reading the classic 'who dunnit' but almost a contemporary account of how the UK changed over two generations and world wars.