The year I read 20 Hercule Poirot mysteries and fell for Agatha Christie

polygon.com:

For years I’ve enjoyed one-off murder mysteries that friends recommended, but the genre hadn’t really gotten its hooks in me. I’ve simply never been the kind of reader who actively tries to solve the case. My friends who champion these books tend to care deeply about tracking red herrings and attempting to out-sleuth the author. I’m just as content to know whodunit from the very start, as long as the novel itself has enjoyable pacing and character writing.

All this is to say I’ve lived three decades without reading anything by the “queen of mystery” Agatha Christie, despite her being one of the best-selling authors of all time. But after burning through tons of romances this year and looking for other books with brisk pacing and a consistent ending, I gave in. I ended up getting so sucked in that I started a passion project of reading every one of Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries in order of publication. It helped me find commonalities in some of my favorite books, shows, and movies, and ultimately led me down a wormhole of so many others. I love to collect hobbies. In 2023, murder mysteries became my latest.

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I started with the books friends most passionately recommended: And Then There Were None and Murder on the Orient Express. They both thrilled me — the former with its macabre and perfectly calibrated deaths, themed to each of the invitees, building and breaking suspense. I understood, immediately, why And Then There Were None is considered one of her best. But Murder on the Orient Express stuck in my mind even longer, specifically because of its bombastic murder reveal at the end — and also because of the detective at the heart of the story, whose illustrious mustaches stole the show. This is, of course,