5 Favourite Hercule Poirot Books

Last updated on 9 May 2016

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Today is Agatha Christie’s birthday. I expect everyone to know who that is, but in case you don’t, Agatha Christie was a great writer. She was born on September 15th 1890, and died back in 1976. She’s best known for her murder series; one main character was Hercule Poirot, and in a different series, Miss Marple. As a teenager I read so many of her books, though the majority of them were Poirot stories, as I didn’t really get into Miss Marple’s adventures.

You may actually know of these stories by their TV show equivalent. Both the Poirot novels, and the Miss Marple series were made into TV adaptations, and ran on TV in the UK. Agatha Christie’s Poirot ran for 13 series, from 1989 – 2013, and Poroit was played by the amazing David Suchet. I haven’t actually seen many of these episodes, though the ones I have seen were ones that I had read, so I knew ‘who done it’.

I love murder mysteries (what.a.weirdo), and Christie’s stories were extremely well written and full of great characters, plot lines, and twists and turns within the stories. Poirot was this little, squat Belgian detective, who sorted of stumbled upon these murders wherever he went. Sometimes he was sort out to investigate, other times murder just followed him.

There are 45 Poirot stories (while the majority are novels, some are short stories), of which I’ve read about 25 of them. Miss Marple, however, was an elderly lady in a village, who acted as a sort of amateur murder consultant. There are only 12 Miss Marple novels, and I’ve probably only read 1 or 2. I thought, in celebration of this incredible writer and story teller, I’d share with you a few of my favourite Poirot novels.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
Murder on the Orient Express (1934)
Death on the Nile (1937)
Five Little Pigs (1942)
Dead Man’s Folly (1956)

While these are probably a few of the most famous, they’re famous for a reason. The Murder of Roger Akroyd was rather controversial at a time, and if you’ve read it you’ll know why. I won’t give anything away (spoilers are even worse when it comes to murder mysteries), but I did actually call it (you know…when you ‘call’ something is going to happen, or when you ‘call’ who did it) from a few pages in.

Murder on the Orient Express is very famous, and you’ll probably know of it, even if you haven’t read or seen it. Death on the Nile is another very famous Poirot novel, and in Five Little Pigs, Poirot investigates a murder that happened 16 years ago. In all the stories, Poirot’s character is brilliant and clever, and so readable. I just love the situations that Christie invented and how they all worked out. She had a brilliant mind and I love reading her stories.

So here’s to you, Agatha. Thanks for writing amazing books. *raises a glass* Cheers.

Have you read any of her books? Have a favourite?