Customer Rating: 
Summary: Short Stories That are Truly Symbolic
Comment: This collection of short stories featuring the loveable Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot are quite delightful. The stories are written in true "tongue-in-cheek" Agatha Christie fastion. In this book we see Hercule Poirot taking on 12 very distinct cases before he thinks he will retire. He tries to duplicate the historical "Labours of Hercules" with these "final" little cases. Each story is truly unique and written in the classical Christie style. There are broad references in these stories to the what is written in the classics about the original "Labours of Hercules", and each story is a gem in its own right.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hercule Poirot goes Greek
Comment: As always, Hercule Poirot is on the verge of retirement. But before he settles down to cultivate vegetable marrows once and for all, he decides to take on twelve last cases, in honour of his famous mythological predecessor Hercules. The twelve cases are each quite different: from searching for a lost pet to hunting down a ferocious murderer. Although this is widely considered to be the best of Christie's short story-collections, I do have some doubts about this statement. Personally I am not a big fan of the short stories featuring Hercule Poirot, where Jane Marple has had more success in this format. An obvious weakness of this particular collection is that in quite a few stories the conclusion is so utterly obvious, that you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to solve the mystery. What makes this collection worth reading though is the skilfully incorporated links to Greek mythology: sometimes quite burlesque, sometimes very subtle.
The stories listed in this collection are "The Apples of the Hesperides", "The Arcadian Deer", "The Augean Stables", "The Capture of Cerberus", "The Cretan Bull", "The Erymanthian Boar", "The Flock of Geryon", "The Gridle of Hyppolita", "The Horses of Diomedes", "The Lernean Hydra", "The Nemean Lion" and "The Stymphalean Birds".
Customer Rating:
Summary: great but a bit slow
Comment: I thought this book ws great although some stories were a bit boring. Overall though, i think it was great
