This is a fun collection of loosely connected short stories. The great Hercule Poirot is getting on a bit and thinking about retirement (and marrows). But first he’s going to go out in style, by taking on twelve carefully selected cases, each one mirroring one of the famous Labours of his classical namesake, Hercules.
The cases are lovely little stories, for the most part. Christie manages to construct surprisingly intricate stories, for the size of them, with only a couple of them feeling morally dubious to me (the one where Poirot gets the PM out of hot water with the media made me feel grubby, in particular). It did make me realise that I’m not as familiar with Greek myth as I thought I was as I had to google (or infer) several of the classical Labours.
Even in short stories, where there’s not as much build-up as is possible in a novel, I stayed true to type and resolutely failed to figure out whodunnit in any of the stories (although I came close once or twice). But if the journey is the point, I had fun travelling with the Great Detective.
