One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie #ReadChristie2025

Christie taps into the near-universal fear people have of the dentist in a mystery where the anxious patients were so busy quaking they became unreliable witnesses when poor Mr. Morley is murdered, practically in front of their eyes!

Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie #ReadChristie2025

Hercule Poirot excels at cold cases so he is intrigued when Carla Lemarchant turns up for an appointment with a murder from the past. When she was 21, she learned that her mother had murdered her father, Amyas Crale, a well-known painter. Caroline Crale was convicted and died in prison, a year later.

Elephants Can Remember by Agatha Christie #ReadChristie2024

I enjoy the Christies that feature Ariadne Oliver, the occasionally ditzy mystery author who dislikes the fictional detective she has made so popular, Sven Hjerson. 

She usually avoids public appearances but in this book she has agreed to attend a literary lunch where she is accosted by a stranger who asks about Mrs. Oliver’s goddaughter, Celia Ravenscroft, and says:

"I want you to tell me, because I’m sure you must know or perhaps have a very good idea how it all came about. Did her mother kill her father or was it the father who killed the mother?"

Third Girl by Agatha Christie #ReadChristie2024

Very little can dent Hercule Poirot’s self-confidence but he is surprisingly distressed when a young woman comes to him for help, worried that she “might have committed a murder,” then says sadly that he is too old to help, and leaves.

The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie #ReadChristie2024

Title: The Mystery of the Blue Train 
Author: Agatha Christie
Publication: Dodd, Mead & Co., hardcover, originally published in 1928
Genre: Mystery
Setting: France and England

Description: An American millionaire, Rufus Van Aldin, has purchased priceless rubies for his only child, Ruthie, which distracts her temporarily from annoyance with her philandering husband. She is heading to France to rendezvous with her first love (dismissed as a fortune hunter by her father years earlier) and takes the famous Blue Train, which brings affluent travelers to the Riviera.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie #ReadChristie23

Title: Murder on the Orient Express
Author: Agatha Christie
Publication: William Morrow, trade paperback, originally published in 1934
Genre: Mystery

Description: Hercule Poirot has been in Syria, investigating a military scandal for an old acquaintance, and is eager to return home. On the train to Stamboul/Istanbul, he encounters a retired British colonel from India and a young woman working as a governess. All three transfer to the Orient Express in Stamboul, heading to France.

Appointment with Death #ReadChristie23

Title: Appointment with Death
Author: Agatha Christie
Publication: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, hardcover, 1965 (originally published in 1937 or 1938)
Genre: Mystery
Setting: Petra (modern day Jordan)

Description: It all begins with the great Poirot closing a hotel window as he hears:

“You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?”

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie #ReadChristie23

Title: Evil Under the Sun
Author: Agatha Christie
Publication: Dodd, Mead & Company, hardcover, originally published in 1941
Genre: Mystery
Setting: 20th century England

Description: A mansion on a small island off the Devon coast has been turned into the Jolly Roger Hotel where guests can swim, play tennis, take walks, and enjoy the convenience of a causeway to the mainland.

Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie #ReadChristie23

Title: Sad Cypress
Author: Agatha Christie
Publication: Berkley, paperback, originally published in 1940
Genre: Mystery/Series
Setting: Great Britain

Description: Elinor Carlisle and Roderick Welman met as children, visiting her Aunt Laura, who was married to his uncle Henry. They are engaged and expect either or both will inherit Laura Welman’s fortune.

Murder in Three Acts by Agatha Christie

Title: Murder in Three Acts (US title), aka Three Act Tragedy (UK title)
Author: Agatha Christie
Publication: Dodd, Mead & Co., hardcover, 1934
Genre: Mystery
Setting: 20th century Great Britain

Description: Sir Charles Cartwright is a retired actor who has built a charming home in Cornwall where he enjoys entertaining.  At a house party that includes guests from London as well as locals, his secretary warns the group will be 13 at dinner unless she joins them.

Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie - for the 1936 Club

Title: Cards on the Table: A Hercule Poirot Mystery
Author: Agatha Christie
Publication: Harper Collins, hardcover (originally published in 1936)
Genre: Mystery
Setting: 1930s London

This week Simon from Stuck in a Book and Karen from Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings are hosting the 1936 Club, where bloggers read and write about books published in a chosen year.

Description: At an exhibition of snuffboxes, which I am sure we all would have enjoyed, Hercule Poirot encounters the purring Mr. Shaitana, a rich man known for his lavish parties.

The Mystery of the Three Quarters: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery (Book Review)

Title: The Mystery of the Three Quarters
Author: Sophie Hannah
Publication: William Morrow, hardcover, 2018
Genre: Mystery

US cover

Plot: The world’s most beloved detective, Hercule Poirot—the legendary star of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and most recently The Monogram Murders and Closed Casket—returns in a stylish, diabolically clever mystery set in the London of the 1930s.

“We Agatha Christie fans read her stories--and particularly her Poirot novels--because the mysteries are invariably equal parts charming and ingenious, dark and quirky and utterly engaging. Sophie Hannah had a massive challenge in reviving the beloved Poirot, and she met it with heart and no small amount of little grey cells. I was thrilled to see the Belgian detective in such very, very good hands. Reading The Monogram Murders was like returning to a favorite room of a long-lost home.”
— Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl