Book #86 of 2024:
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #44)
This final Hercule Poirot novel is not one of the better mysteries in its series, relying as it does on an implausible understanding of psychology for a serial killer’s eventually revealed motivation and means. It can also be frustrating to read, as the detective has returned to his didactic and patronizing ways towards our narrator Hastings, whom he summons back to the scene of their first investigation with news that he’s tracked a murderer there (someone linked to five previous and seemingly unrelated deaths, all of which have been officially attributed to other parties). Arrogantly, the old Belgian asks his supposed friend to help him look around for signs of who the next victim will be, but then refuses to share his own findings or identify the suspect for him, which constitutes a considerable handicap. He even pooh-poohs the reasonable objection from Hastings that killers don’t necessarily kill everywhere they visit, and there’s no evidence that this particular one is preparing to strike again. It’s strange too that the captain’s own adult daughter is one of the current residents of Styles — and thus a potential target if Poirot is to be believed! — and yet neither gentleman ever warns her to be on guard or attempts to convince her to leave. Instead, her father is more concerned that she might possibly be romantically involved with another guest, who’s a married man.
With all that being said: I do ultimately like this story a lot, and would call it a worthy sendoff for Poirot, who still gets to deliver his traditional stunning and insightful denouement reveal. While he doesn’t do much investigating beforehand — he’s elderly and in a wheelchair now — the book as a whole functions as a sharp character study and critique of him in all his vanity and moralizing. It’s not quite the genre I expected from this title, but I can see why author Agatha Christie famously saved it for last, writing the manuscript and locking it away in a vault for several decades before publication. It would be the final work she released in her lifetime, and she’s made no apparent effort throughout to edit it to conform with anything written subsequently but published first. Fans obsessing over continuity of the series at large will thus find plenty of details here like certain character ages that are difficult if not impossible to reconcile across the volumes. Nevertheless, it provides a powerful parting image of the detective exercising his little grey cells to defeat a criminal once more.
[Content warning for suicide, gun violence, and eugenics.]
★★★★☆
Postscript: I’m not going to rank every volume like I normally would when I finish a series, but here’s how I would sort the Poirot books as rated by tier. Note that I’m using the series numbering according to Goodreads, but that I didn’t read #7 Black Coffee: A Mystery Play in Three Acts (a play and not a book), #28 The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories (a collection comprised entirely of stories I’d already read elsewhere), or #43 Poirot’s Early Cases: 18 Hercule Poirot Mysteries (likewise).
★☆☆☆☆
#5 The Big Four
★★☆☆☆
#1 The Mysterious Affair at Styles, #2 The Murder on the Links, #3 Poirot Investigates, #6 The Mystery of the Blue Train, #14 Murder in Mesopotamia, #20 Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, #21 The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories, #29 Taken at the Flood, #31 The Under Dog and Other Stories, #32 Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, #34 Hickory Dickory Dock, #39 The Clocks, #41 Hallowe’en Party, #42 Elephants Can Remember
★★★☆☆
#9 Lord Edgware Dies, #11 Three Act Tragedy, #15 Cards on the Table, #16 Murder in the Mews, #17 Dumb Witness, #19 Appointment with Death, #22 Sad Cypress, #23 One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, #24 Evil Under the Sun, #27 The Labours of Hercules, #33 After the Funeral, #35 Dead Man’s Folly, #36 Cat Among the Pigeons, #37 The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, #38 Double Sin and Other Stories, #40 Third Girl
★★★★☆
#8 Peril at End House, #10 Murder on the Orient Express, #12 Death in the Clouds, #13 The A.B.C. Murders, #18 Death on the Nile, #25 Five Little Pigs, #26 The Hollow, #30 Three Blind Mice and Other Stories, #44 Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
★★★★★
#4 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Overall rating for the Hercule Poirot series: ★★★☆☆
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