Mildly entertaining, but not as interesting as Christie's full length works. (Not that I've read more than a handful, but the opinion holds for what I have read.) I think what caused me to lose interest was the amount of repetition. It felt like the bulk of the stories collected here relied upon substitution. Either someone was impersonated by someone else, or some object had been swapped with another object. When this is the solution once or twice, it's clever. When it happens over and over again, however, it begins to seem like laziness... a sort of mystery themed cut-and-paste. No coincidence that the two stories I liked best, "The Chocolate Box" and "The Case of the Missing Will", had different solutions. Those were solid three star reads, but they didn't make up for all that sameness, or for the casual racism scattered though the book. Also, Poirot comes across - even more than usual! - as enormously smug. It's entertaining, but I'm undecided as to whether this (genuine) character flaw makes me like him better or worse.