• The Observer: ‘Twice as brilliant as Death on the Nile, which was entirely brilliant.’

20. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (1938)

This novel was the author’s gift to her brother-in-law, who had complained that her stories were, for him, ‘too academic.’ What he desired was a ‘good violent murder with lots of blood.’ From the epigraph—a quotation from Macbeth—to its startling end, Agatha delivered a gift made to order.

It is Christmas Eve. The Lee family reunion, never a lively affair, is interrupted by a deafening crash and a high-pitched scream. The tyrannical head of the Lee family, Simeon, lies dead in a pool of blood, his throat slashed. Hercule Poirot is spending the holidays with his friend Colonel Johnson, the chief constable of the local village. At the Lee house he finds an atmosphere not of mourning but of mutual suspicion. Christmas with family—survive it this year with Hercule Poirot.

Fair warning: In an exchange between Poirot and Colonel Johnson, the solution of Three-Act Tragedy is revealed.

21. Sad Cypress (1940)

Beautiful, young Elinor Carlisle stands serenely in the dock, accused of the murder of Mary Gerrard, her rival in love. The evidence is damning: only Elinor had the motive, the opportunity, and the means to administer the fatal poison. Inside the hostile courtroom, one man is all that stands between Elinor and the gallows—Hercule Poirot.

• Daily Mail: ‘Poirot solves another exciting case.’
• Charles Osborne, Agatha Christie’ biographer: ‘One of the most real, least schematic of crime novels. It is also unusual in that it employs the device of the possible miscarriage of justice…And it works superbly as a murder mystery.’

22. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940)

‘Nineteen, twenty, my plate’s empty.’ But the reader’s plate is full indeed, as Hercule Poirot must follow a familiar nursery rhyme through a course of murder. The adventure is kicked off by the apparent suicide of a Harley Street dentist—who would also appear to have murdered one of his patients. Hercule Poirot has himself been this dentist’s patient on this very day, and suspects foul play. A shoe buckle holds the key to the mystery. But—five, six—will Poirot pick up sticks, and—seven, eight—lay them straight…before a murderer can strike again?

• The New York Times: ‘A swift course of unflagging suspense leads to complete surprise.’

23. Evil Under the Sun (1941)

‘There was that about her which made every other woman on the beach seem faded and insignificant. And with equal inevitability, the eye of every male present was drawn and riveted on her.’