During the respite above the rushing waters of the Arkansas River in our hotel room at the Surf Hotel in Buena Vista, I had a chance to read Poirot Investigates, which is an early collection of short stories featuring Hercule Poirot that Christie wrote after the first two Poirot novels. I had been planning on skipping it, but a sense of completionism took hold of me about my project, so I purchased it on Kindle for ninety-nine cents and read it on iPhone, mostly while sitting on the balcony of the hotel. It felt so wonderfully continental.
There were fourteen stories in the volume. Christie did not write many such short stories, and one can see why. The novel is her strong suit as far as genres. The short stories seemed more like sketches, case studies for a larger projects. They seemed an attempt by Christie to duplicate as closely as possible the short story format of Conan Doyle in the Sherlock Holmes stories, where he excels. In all of the Christie short stories, the narrator is Captain Hastings and the format is uncannily like Conan Doyle. In fact there is almost a hint of ripping off Conan Doyle in some of the plot elements. One of the stories is remarkably close to A Scandal in Bohemia. Nevertheless the stories were enjoyable to read and I'm glad I took the time to make them part of my project.
No comments:
Post a Comment