I’ve been participating in the  Read Christie 2026 Challenge, and for May, I read The Labors of Hercules.

It is a collection of short stories featuring Christie’s Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot.

The stories all connect and follow the theme of Poirot sharing twelve cases to close his career as a private detective. Because he was named after Hercules (though his name does not have the “s”), he decides his final cases will be those that follow the Greek myth of the 12 Labors of Hercules.

I don’t really know a lot about Greek mythology, but I figured it out along the way.

Agatha wrote these as serialized stories in The Strand magazine from 1939 to 1940, with the last one being written for the collection in 1947.

I wasn’t too sure about this one when I started it, but the book, with each chapter focused on a short mystery, grew on me as I kept going. Some of the stories were more serious than the others.

I almost gave up after the second story, since the first couple were not written well to me, but I’m glad I didn’t give up because the stories got better – especially the final one where Poirot ran into a woman he used to have an attraction to – Countess Vera Rossakoff.

There was a lot of humor and just a good story in that one, which was entitled The Capture of Cerberus.

Here are a couple of quotes I enjoyed from that story:

“It is the misfortune of small precise men to hanker after large and flamboyant women. Poirot had never been able to rid himself of the fatal fascination the Countess held for him. Though I was something like twenty years since he had seen her last, the magic still held. Granted that her makeup now resembled a scene-painter’s sunset, with the woman under the makeup well hidden from sight, to Hercule Poirot she still represented the sumptuous and the alluring.”

When Poirot first sees her again after so many years, it is on an escalator and she shouts back at him to meet her in hell. He later learns from his secretary, Miss Lemon, that Hell is a nightclub, and he later learns the countess owns it.

At first, though, he is totally baffled.

“But what had she meant by it? Had she meant London’s Underground Railways? Or were her words to be taken in a religious sense? Surely, even if her own way of life made Hell the most plausible destination for her after this life, surely—surely her Russian Courtesy would not suggest that Hercule Poirot was necessarily bound for the same place?”

Then, when he finally does get to the club…

“The place was full and it had about it that unmistakable air of success which cannot be counterfeited. There were languid couples in full evening dress, Bohemians in corduroy trousers, stout gentlemen in business suits. The band, dressed as devils, dispensed hot music. No doubt about it, Hell had caught on.

“We have all kinds here,” said the Countess. “That is as it should be, is it not? The gates of Hell are open to all?”

“Except, possibly, to the poor?” Poirot suggested.

The Countess laughed. “Are we not told that it is difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Naturally, then, he should have priority in Hell.”

I was surprised by how much Agatha wrote about cocaine use and its destruction in these stories. Sometimes I am very naïve and forget that cocaine and drug abuse was a very real thing even back then.

If I didn’t think it would bore both you and me, I would go through each story and tell you why I did or didn’t like it, and share some quotes. Instead, I will simply reiterate that there were good stories and not as good stories, in my opinion, but that I would read them all because what one person doesn’t like, another person might like.

My mom and I share a Kindle/Goodreads account and I noticed when I finished it that she gave it a three star. I bumped it up to a four, but without that last story I might have given it a three too (or 3.5), even though the idea behind it was very ingenious.

Have you read this collection yet?

Up next for me for the Read Christie 2026 challenge is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.