Poirot Investigates

This is gonna sound derivative, but this book felt like someone asked, "What if Knives Out was a serialized TV show with 30-minute episodes and no continuity?" The short story format just did not work for me from what I've come to expect from a Christie mystery.

We do the whole thing where our protagonist Captain Hastings is kind of a sidekick to Detective Poirot, who is the real reason why we're here. They call each other friends, but they're way more rude to each other here than in the previous two books I've read, and Hastings seems downright mad at Poirot's infallibility at times, but that never develops into a plot point or anything.

Each chapter is a new mystery with new characters, which, fine. And the nature of the mysteries are pretty varied between murders, kidnappings, thefts, and even a clever one towards the end involving a missing will. But I felt like the procedures were a little rushed and by the time I'm trying to wrap my head around the big setpiece reveal we're on to the next one. It got a touch formulaic and repetitive, but there's definitely a level of creative skill going on to even think of these scenarios, let alone this many.

This isn't the last I'll read of Christie, but maybe I'll stick to her proper novels from now on.