Available in German: Ersten Arbeiten Des Herkules
by Agatha Christie
Most short story anthologies feature stories that are unrelated to each other, except perhaps as regards detectives – all featuring Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Nick Velvet, The Black Widowers, etc. . Theme collections usually focus on the obvious - mysteries featuring cats, or Christmas, or time travel, etc.
With The Labors of Hercules, Agatha Christie presented a unique idea - twelve short stories that could stand on their own and but were also ingeniously interconnected. The unifying theme was the mythological theme of the twelve Labors of Hercules.
Hercule Poirot intends to retire to the country to grow vegetable marrows. He remarks upon this to a friend, who comments that Poirot will not succeed. ‘’Yours aren’t the labors of Hercules, yours are labors of love.’’ The quote is all the more apposite because Hercule Poirot is a small, neat, elegant, elderly man.
Poirot seizes on this idea. He is not a muscle bound Greek hero - he is a modern Hercules. He will therefore accept only twelve cases before his retirement, and they each must symbolically represent one of the Labors. The way in which Christie works in this symbolism is ingenious, and the majority of these stories are brilliant works of the form.
Contents
Agatha Christie books are well written...but simple. She doesn't use a huge vocabulary, nor try to impress the reader with her erudition. She tells complicated stories, simply. As such, these books make great tools to learn a different language. [And as Christie points out in The Stymphalean Birds, knowing another language or two can save your life!]
Christie books have been translated into many different languages including French, Spanish and German. For the audience in America, it is easy for you to get your hands on these:
Asesinato En El Campo de Golf: Murder on the Links
If you've read them so often in English that you know them by heart, it will make reading the foreign version all the easier and quicker to learn the language.
How It All Came About
1. The Nemean Lion – Poirot intends only to help a ‘lion’ of industry, but the first case he accepts involves a missing Pekinese dog.
2. The Lernean Hydra – A country practitioner is being persecuted by gossip, yet it turns out his wife was murdered.
3. The Arcadian Deer – A touching story, of a woman who disappears and the simple youth who asks Poirot to find her.
4. The Erymanthian Board – Poirot travels high to the remote and isolated Rochers Neiges, in Switzerland, only to be stranded at the ski resort with a killer.
5. The Augean Stables – It is not unusual for a politician to be a crook – but how to prevent his reputation from harming his party.
6. The Stymphalean Birds – A gem of a story, and a fine argument for learning foreign languages. Harold Waring travels to Herzoslovakia on vacation, and meets a woman married to a brute. Can he help her?
7. The Cretan Bull – A young man has a history of madness in his family, but his fiance won’t let him give up their plans.
8. The Horses of Diomedes – A young doctor is falling in love. Unfortunately, the woman he loves pushes drugs.
9. The Girdle of Hyppolita – A painting is stolen, and a girl disappears from a train. Can the two incidents be related.
10. The Flock of Geryon – Fake religious cults have flourished through the ages, can Poirot prove that the Flock of Geryon is such a one? (Miss Carnaby, who appears in The Nemean Lion reappears.
11. The Apples of the Hesperides – Years before, a valuable art object was stolen. It has never been recovered, but Poirot doesn’t know the meaning of the word defeat.
12. The Capture of Cerberus – ‘It is the misfortune of small, precise men to hanker after large and flamboyant women.’ Hercule Poirot is no exception – the Countess Vera Rossakoff, a former jewel thief who has now reformed and runs a nightclub in London called Hell, must be saved from Hell’s other inhabitants. The Capture of Cerberus is the logical and fitting end to Hercule Poirot’s labors, and the connecting thread really makes this one of Poirot’s best performances.
Asesinato En El Orient Express: Murder on the Orient Express
El Secreto De Chimneys: The Secret of Chimneys
Muerte en la Vicaria: Murder at the Vicarage
Poirot Investigata: Poirot Investigates
Testigo de Cargo: Witness for the Prosecution
This review copyright June 13, 2000.
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Reel Murder is currently out of print. It is available from used bookstores: www.abe.com.
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