My opinion is that in Agatha Christie's books Hercule Poirot jumps to conclusions?do you agree?

Question

I mean the book doesnt give us enough clues and suddenly hercule poirot says a lot of stuff that were not mentioned anywhere and voila here is the murder!!
do you agree?

Answer 1

Ahh... but that's why Agatha Christie is so tricky!

Great point Dramaturg - Hastings (Poirot's buddy who's in most of the Poirot books) is sort of a stand in for us, the audience - reader. What happens so often is that Agatha Christie uses Hastings as a device to deceive us. She gives us clues, but buries them or misdirects our attention away from them by allowing Hastings to not interpret them correctly. Because Hastings and other characters (like the local police inspectors) are looking the wrong way, we do to. Often the REAL clue is hidden in passing.

Agatha christie loves to use Red Herrings - which is when a clue is deliberately false in order to cause us to look in the wrong direction.

I agree that it can seem like Poirot has some unfair advantages. There's also clues here and there in Agatha Christie that we, the readers of 2007 (and especially American readers) are just not going to get - a good example is a twist in one novel (non-poirot) where the plot hinges on knowledge of how to tip a servant (like, do you tip the parlourmaid or the 2nd gardner?)

My method w/Agatha Christie is to always Re-read them. I actually like them better the second time, when I know who the murderer is, because then I can spot the clues and misdirections for myself. It's like figuring out how the puzzle got put together. When you do this, you'll see she's not cheating you at all.

Answer 2

No. The reason we don't get enough clues is because we are seeing things from Hastings' point of view. He doesn't have all the info or insight that Poirot has, so neither do we. Poirot always gives a very reasoned defense for his position at the end--which is always the correct answer--thus, leading me to believe he has reasoned his way through his cases by paying more attention and delving deeper than others, i.e. Hastings; not through jumping to conclusions. Don't confuse novel structure and point of view with the storyline and character knowledge.