Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition

Perfect mystery, perfect reader, perfect packaging (details)
Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings began their first renowned case together with The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Hercule Poirot Mysteries (Audio)). And in their concluding encounter, Poirot’s last case, the pair completes the circle, again teaming up at Styles Court (which is under new ownership) to ferret out a murderer.The old mansion of Styles is now a renovated boarding house run by an elderly couple and Poirot calls upon his life-long friend and Man Friday, Captain Hastings, to abet him in his final and most compelling case. Hasting’s modernistic and independent daughter is also on the premises and the Captain’s unwelcome exertions in attempting to sort out her future provides an appetizing sub-plot.One of the numerous residents of Styles is a serial killer and the motive for this murderer’s heinous crimes remains unclear for a time. The solution to this one is a real zinger and Christie fans will certainly not be let down.This is a “Golden Age” classic British mystery in every sense, even though the book was published in 1975. The fact is that, doubting her own survival in the face of the endless World War Two conflagrations, Christie wrote this fine whodunnit in the early 1940s! The Poirot mystery which Christie last wrote (1972) was Elephants Can Remember (Hercule Poirot), and her final work (which featured Tommy and Tuppence Beresford) was Postern of Fate, published in 1973. Agatha Christie died in 1976.Hugh Fraser reads this story from the first-person perspective of Captain Hastings. His reading and rhythm are just top-notch, as it is with all the Christie works which he has taken on. Prospective buyers should be aware that this title is also available with an alternative reader: Curtain: Complete & Unabridged: Poirot’s Last Case. This edition is read by John Moffatt, another master of the art. Which one is best? I cannot say for anyone else but I prefer Fraser on this particular work but most folks will be pleased with either one.I really like the packaging on my Harpercollins audiobook, which is notably different than the one pictured. My CDs are securely housed in a clear, heavy plastic, music-type container and all five CDs are “stacked” inside, a method which I find preferable to the typical cardboard “slip cases” where each CD slides into a slot. If this is an issue, you might contact the seller in advance to see which packaging format s/he is offering. In any event, the total time for this unabridged audiobook is six hours and what a superb listening experience it is!There is little else to say except to reiterate that this is a terrific Hercule Poirot mystery that all Christie fans will want to hear time and again.

More Hastings, Less Poirot
Well !? I was miffed to have missed the David Suchet television representation of Poirot’s last ever mystery, so I decided that i HAD to read the book – based on the buzz that had been created by the media surrounding the storyline.I shall not spoil the plot and reveal all – that would be so unsportsmanlike (other contributors should take note!) – so I shall just say that as an Agatha Christie fan I was kind of putting off reading this, almost like saving the best for last, but also knowing that it would be ‘strange’ to go back to other Poirot novels knowing what happens to him in this final story.The story is narrated by Hastings, his ever-faithful friend and co-sort. It was written in a remarkably clever manner, still detailing the usual pithy Christie characterisations and observations of all the people present (the list of suspects). So it was almost like reading any other Agatha Christie – it was an enjoyable read. The only thing that was disappointing was the lack of the man himself ‘starring’ in this book, as it really would have been a spectacle to have Poirot weave his eccentricities throughout, creating tensions, asking questions, motivating the energy, bringing out sub-plots and then – as always – gathering the crowd of maybe-murderers together at the end to do the ‘big reveal’. In this book we find Poirot a very elderly and immobile figure, confined to a wheelchair, bound by his physical ailments and – for the most part in this book – locked away in his room at the hotel only surfacing occasionally to steer Capt Hastings back on track with the investigations.Needless to say, the mystery is solved – it is all justifiable and made sense in the end – and, yes!, Poirot does a type of final performance/reveal at the end which wraps it all up nicely. However, I cannot help but feel that this was written almost in a cold, calculated, way by AC as necessity out of having to detail the end of Poirot, to wrap him up and close that chapter for herself, the publishers and the readers. There did not feel any real act of love for Hercule, which I was quite saddened by.Hastings does somehow manage to carry Curtain though,and is an affable, likeable, diligent character. It is through his emotions, from his perspective, that we view the demise of the Great Belgian Detective. It just would have been nice to have felt it for myself.

Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976) is one of the bestselling authors of all time, whose books have sold about 2 billion copies in many different languages. Her most famous creation is M. Hercule Poirot, a Belgian refugee who works as a private detective in England. Poirot’s first appearance was in 1920 and his last appearance is in this book published in 1975!‘Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case’ offers an ensemble cast of characters gathered at Styles Court, where Poirot had stayed when he first reached England. Captain Hastings, the brave but obtuse narrator, receives an unexpected invitation from Poirot to join him at Styles Court, which is now being run as a guest house by Colonel Luttrell and his wife. One of the guests is Dr Franklin, who employs the narrator’s daughter Judith for assisting his research into physostigmines extracted from West African Calabar beans – the details appear to be quite authentic, as Christie had famously acquired a detailed knowledge of poisons while working as a nurse during the First World War.Poirot seems brilliant and egoistic as ever, but “crippled with arthiritis, he propelled himself about in a wheeled chair.” He informs Hastings that there is a dangerous murderer amongst the guests, whom he does not name but simply calls ‘X’. Hastings is assigned the seemingly impossible task of observing the activities of X, whose identity is still unknown to him. To add to his woes, Hastings finds that Judith flirting with another guest whom he considers a “rotter”…Christie often relies on literature and art to convey hints and shades of meaning. The name ‘Judith’ comes from the Old Testament, where a girl by that name killed Holofernes, the general of an army which had besieged her hometown. In this book, some suspicion falls on Dr Franklin and Judith after the hypochondriacal Mrs Franklin dies by ingesting the very substance that was being researched by them. Apart from the Biblical allusion, Judith had declared herself in favour of ending “unfit lives, useless lives.” Dr Franklin, too, expresses similar views. “Since death comes anyway, what does it matter if it comes early or late? There’s so little difference.”‘Curtain’ was actually written in 1939-40, in the midst of Christie’s most productive period. As Lucy Worsely says in her recent biography of Christie, “She also pushed ahead with two more books, ‘Sleeping Murder’ and ‘Curtain’. One featuring Miss Marple and the other the death of Hercule Poirot, these two were not to be published immediately, but stockpiled for the future. They were stored in a bank vault, insured against destruction, and given by deed of gift to Rosalind and Max,” referring to her daughter and husband respectively.It appears that Christie never tried to update this book to suit the changing times and hence it appears quite anachronistic. While ‘Curtain’ does not explicitly mention when the events take place, from the context it appears that it is set in the late 1940s or early 1950s, since there are frequent references to the Second World War and erstwhile colonial administrators are still in the prime of life. In contrast, there are several Poirot novels – e.g. ‘Third Girl’ and ‘Halloween Party’ – which are clearly set in the 1960s.The plot of this book is superlative, even by Christie’s standards. Without giving away the plot, I think that this book redefines the boundaries of detective stories, even as ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ had done when it had been published nearly fifty years earlier.Note: Just as connoisseurs of music might prefer the authenticity of LPs compared to the soulless perfection of digital sound, those who love old books will appreciate the hard-bound facsimile of the first edition.

Excellent