The second Poirot mystery ever written, and I'm not sure Christie had his character quite ready yet, he managed to surprise me in the end.

This was only the second Agatha Christie novel that I read as an adult. I believe I read most of her Poirot and many Miss Marple stories when I was about 9-11 years old and of course I have since probably watched all the episodes starring David Suchet. So usually I would have some inkling of the plot, which is why I often choose not to read them anymore, but not with this one. And again this was a random find, so I thought why not? I did guess some parts of the story very early on, though the plot was pretty interesting.

It was a quick read like I thought it would be and I wanted to read something light. I found Hastings more irritating than I remembered him, maybe he gets smarter in the later novels. I might have given this four stars but there wasn't anything special in the story, just good, basic Agatha quality. But of course that is often better than many other authors manage. ( )