wretched, awful book. agatha christie cannot write short stories as short as these. her characters are regularly cardboard slat stereotypes mixed in a bingo ball cage with a well developed poirot and in a narrative this short, their complete lack of characterization or intrigue is extremely apparent. hastings, who is decently characterized, rarely moves past his disdain and jealousy toward poirot when given so little literary room to breathe. all of these stories jammed back to back with no substance made this an incredibly unpleasant read. no one crime, character cast, or setting was fleshed out enough to give it panache or to allow the reader an attempt to solve the mystery before poirot just tells us what happened. also this was the most racist poirot novel thus far with not only a frequent use of racial slurs, but racial stereotyping and racist rhetoric. point out sign of the times if you wish, but christie refrained from this level of racist drivel in the previous novels.