Hercule Poirot's Christmas: A Hercule Poirot Mystery [Paperback]

When most families get together for Christmas, they can end up wanting to kill each other. Most don't actually do it.

But when a family patriarch is a malevolent old lecher like Simeon Lee with vast quantities of money, it's no surprise when he ends up dead. Agatha Christie's "Hercule Poirot's Christmas" is a decidedly unsentimental little Yuletide murder mystery, full of snow-covered manorhouses, gruesome noises and plenty of people who have come for the holidays -- and aren't what they claim to be.

As the book opens, a young Spanish girl named Pilar and Stephan Farr from Africa encounter each other on a train, heading for the exact same house -- that of Simeon Lee. Oh yeah, and they both obviously have something to hide.

Turns out that old diamond mogul Simeon is gathering his adult children at his house, where the downtrodden Alfred and increasingly fed up Lydia live. Among the kids: stuffy MP George and his slinky wife Magdalene, globe-trotting "black sheep" Harry, and sensitive mama's boy David and his steadfast wife Hilda. Pilar and Stephen are welcomed with open arms, but Simeon starts playing mind games with his resentful offspring by revealing the intention of changing his will. That night, the house is roused by a gruesome howl -- and he's found with his throat cut in a locked room.

Due to the puzzling nature of the crime and the bizarre evidence, local superintendent Sugden calls in the famed detective Hercule Poirot -- especially since Lee has not only been killed, but his uncut diamonds have been stolen. With his little grey cells, Poirot begins unravelling all the family secrets and lies -- including some surprising facts about Pilar and Stephen. But since the murderer is close at hand, Poirot must solve the seemingly impossible crime before another Yuletide murder happens.

Apparently Agatha Christie wrote "Hercule Poirot's Christmas" for a funny reason -- her brother-in-law complained that her murders were all so clean and bloodless. Ladylike murders tended to be more Christie's forte. So this one is not only bloody, but downright gory -- Simeon gets his throat cut and the whole room is sprayed with blood. You can tell Christie had some fun writing about that, especially with the obligatory quote from the Scottish play: "who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?"

So even though "Hercule Poirot's Christmas" has everything a Christmas story should have, it's actually really lacking in festivity -- from the very first scene, we're treated to a Yuletide England that is dark, smoky, grimy and full of barely-hidden resentments and old wounds. Christie sprinkles the plot with plenty of suspense, bizarre clues that aren't easily figured out (especially a rubber scrap that Pilar picks off the floor), and a plethora of suspects who would have liked to see Simeon cold'n'dead, but who couldn't possibly have gotten inside to do it.

And while the investigation is pretty straightforward, it's strewn with some surprising revelations about a couple of the family members. Christie's writing and dialogue tend to be a bit choppy, with many short exclaimations. But her vivid descriptions (London girls are described as "smooth egg-shaped faced, scarlet-lipped") and tightly coiled plot keep the story chugging along, although the murderer is only moderately hard to figure out.

Hercule Poirot comes in when the book is already well underway, and in a way he almost takes a backseat to the other characters. The spawn of Simeon cross a wide range -- the scrappy bad-boy, the whiny mama's boy, the stuffy airbag and the downtrodden guy -- as do their wives, who range from a plain "nice woman" to a flaky sexpot with a rather shady sexual past. Pilar and Stephen are perhaps the most colorful and least resentful people in the cast -- and Simeon is a nasty, malevolent old tyrant.

"Hercule Poirot's Christmas" is thankfully devoid of sentimental reason-for-the-season dribbling -- it's all about wretchedly dysfunctional families, gruesome murder and the occasional popped balloon.

An average of 5 stars for this silly mystery? please. Nobody enjoys an Agatha Christie mystery more than myself, but I never expected all her books to be of the same quality. Therefore I wasnt too surprised to find that HERCULE POIROT'S CHRISTMAS belonged to that small group of lesser interesting writings. I can give you four reasons. Firstly, the characters are gravely underdeveloped. It just seems that there was such a great need for suspects that it didnt matter if some of them were almost completely left out of the scope of the pointing finger of blame.
Secondly, the most fascinating of a Poirot mystery is the little Belgian, pocket Hercules, himself. And although Dame Agatha usually does such a splendid job of describing him beautifully and thoroughly down to the smallest detail, here we are faced with just a shadow of this talent. The same goes for the story as a whole, it seems more a preliminary sketch rather than a finished project, as it always seems to rush you along, introducing too many characters and too many sub-plots in too little time and with too little detail.
As a third point Id like to point out, what all readers must have found very annoying, is that at the end, one supposed clue to the mystery is given as never having been a clue at all. It seems it was simply something necessary to baffle us even more in the beginning, that was forgotten by the writer during the solving of the mystery, and put in at the end when it was remembered, with a silly excuse. All this makes the haste and the hurry of the last pages seem even more annoying, is extremely dissatisfying and gives one the impression the writer just wanted to get it over with.
And finally, as for the last point. IT WAS OBVIOUS. Its true, we all try to find the culprit and with the brilliant Agatha Christie pointing the carrot in all directions we usually fail, and this makes the ending usually so exciting and fulfilling. But this time Christie has failed. When, still far from any conclusion to the story, Poirot goes to a certain store, and buys a certain item, then the solution was obvious, and the ending probably not even worth reading.
It may be argued the whole point of the Agatha Christie mysteries is the mystery itself and the suspense, and not the character analysis or the background or the complexity of the plot. But in this case, in the case of HERCULE POIROTS CHRISTMAS, I find there to be a lack of all expected ingredients. Had it been a mystery to the end, had the unveiling of the murderer been a surprise, then maybe it would have deserved 4 stars, but as I said before, Christie, this time made it too obvious.
Nevertheless I can only recommend that this Poirot mystery be skipped, because the rest are very enjoyable little pleasures (and I highly recommend THE MURDER OF ROGER ACROYD).
That little Belgian, with his little grey cells. Yes, he is truly a remarkable creation, is he not Hastings?

This book has one of the best conclusions of all the Agatha Christie novels I have read. I very highly recommend it to anyone who likes mystery novels, even to people who haven't read an Agatha Christie book before.

Simeon Lee is one of the richest men in England. He is estranged from most of his family, but one Christmas, he invites them to come to his mansion to spend the holiday with him. He is found brutally murdered in a pool of blood in his bedroom, which was locked from the inside. Each of his relatives has a motive, but it is up to Hercule Poirot to figure out which one of them is the murderer--before he or she strikes again.