Poirot Adventures: The Underdog

Two hours of reading? That’s far and away the longest short in the collection. Interesting…

Businessman Sir Reuben has been murdered, and it’s up to Poirot to find the killer. The suspects: the members of his staff and family. But who? It’s far from a straight-forward case. Papa Poirot will have to put all his little grey cells to work in order to crack it.

This is another Poirot solo story. Hastings is nowhere to be seen. He’s briefly mentioned, but that’s about it. And once again, I find that the story is better for it.

A troublesome trend…

In place of Hastings, Poirot spends most of the story with the family butler. This makes for a fun

Length is definitely this short’s ally. Each of the two parts are fairly substantial in size. As such, we’re given plenty of time to learn about the suspects and to collect clues. A large part of the story is Poirot experimenting in various ways to try and piece it together via pantomime. It’s a complex and intriguing mystery.

But it isn’t perfect. For one, the suspects aren’t particularly interesting. If they didn’t have one-note personalities, they had none whatsoever. When the culprit is finally revealed, it’s honestly kind of disappointing. Sure, you could technically solve the case yourself. Unfortunately, the actual motivation for the killer feels pretty weak. “He bullied me a lot, so I murdered him!”

There’s also a really dumb moment where Poirot has one of the suspects hypnotized to get clues. This just felt out of place. In prior Poirot shorts, supernatural stuff like this was a red haring, a clever ruse Poirot used to trick people. Here, it’s played straight. It isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s not what I enjoy about Poirot mysteries.

To end on a high note, this story is very fun to read. It’s got a lot of personality and fun moments. We even get to see a panicked and flummoxed Poirot, something you don’t often see in old detective stories like these.

‘The Underdog’ is a pretty decent story. Despite my grievances, it’s still an enjoyable read and a decent head-scratcher. If you’ve got two hours to kill, give this one a shot. Overall, it’s still a strong piece of fiction.