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Hercule Poirot Reading Order

By the Bingerun team · How we choose the order →

Fifty entries: 33 Poirot novels, nine short story collections, one original stage play and a novella that surfaced in 2013, plus six authorised continuation novels by Sophie Hannah. Read in publication order, because Christie wrote Curtain during the Blitz and locked it in a bank vault so that it would always land last.

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  1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles 1920

    Poirot's debut and the day he meets Captain Hastings. Written in 1916, published in the US in October 1920 and in the UK in January 1921. Curtain returns to this exact house.

  2. Poirot Investigates 1924

    Eleven stories in the UK edition, fourteen in the 1925 US edition. Hastings narrates every one of them.

  3. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd 1926

    The famous one. Poirot is in retirement growing marrows and Dr Sheppard narrates in Hastings' place. Read it before anyone spoils it for you.

  4. The Big Four 1927

    Skippable. A fix-up of twelve Sketch magazine stories reworked with Campbell Christie's help into espionage pulp rather than a whodunit. This is where publication-order readers stall.

  5. The Mystery of the Blue Train 1928

    Written during the collapse of Christie's first marriage. She disliked it ever after and said so in print.

  6. Black Coffee 1930

    Christie's only original Poirot stage play, premiered 8 December 1930 at the Embassy Theatre and published in 1934. Charles Osborne novelised it in 1998. Hastings is in it.

  7. Peril at End House 1932

    Hastings back from Argentina. A common recommended entry point if you would rather not begin at book one.

  8. Lord Edgware Dies 1933

    Published in the US as Thirteen at Dinner.

  9. Murder on the Orient Express 1934

    The US first edition was titled Murder in the Calais Coach, so the two are the same book.

  10. Three Act Tragedy 1934

    The rare Christie that reached the US first, as Murder in Three Acts in October 1934, three months before the January 1935 UK edition, which changes the killer's motive.

  11. Death in the Clouds 1935

    US title Death in the Air.

  12. The A.B.C. Murders 1936

    January 1936, not 1935, despite what half the reading lists online say. Hastings narrates.

  13. Murder in Mesopotamia 1936

    Drawn from Christie's own seasons on archaeological digs with her second husband, Max Mallowan.

  14. Cards on the Table 1936

    Ariadne Oliver's first appearance alongside Poirot. She becomes his recurring foil in the later books.

  15. Murder in the Mews 1937

    Four Poirot novellas. The US edition, Dead Man's Mirror, drops The Incredible Theft, so the two are not interchangeable.

  16. Dumb Witness 1937

    US title Poirot Loses a Client. Hastings' last novel appearance before Curtain, thirty-eight years later.

  17. Death on the Nile 1937

    The most adapted Poirot after Orient Express, and one of the best books to hand a newcomer.

  18. Appointment with Death 1938

    Christie's own 1945 stage version removes Poirot entirely and changes the solution.

  19. Hercule Poirot's Christmas 1938

    Also sold as Murder for Christmas and A Holiday for Murder. Same book, three covers.

  20. The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories 1939

    US-only. Its Poirot stories did not reach a UK book until Poirot's Early Cases in 1974.

  21. Sad Cypress 1940

    Built around a courtroom and unusually sombre for the period.

  22. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe 1940

    US titles The Patriotic Murders and An Overdose of Death.

  23. Evil Under the Sun 1941

    Roughly where Curtain would land if you read in the order the books were written, with twelve novels still to come.

  24. Five Little Pigs 1942

    US title Murder in Retrospect. A sixteen-year-old cold case rebuilt from five conflicting accounts, and a frequent pick for her best.

  25. The Hollow 1946

    US title Murder After Hours. Christie later cut Poirot out of her own stage adaptation.

  26. The Labours of Hercules 1947

    Twelve cases framed as the mythological labours, closing with a replacement Capture of Cerberus after the original was shelved.

  27. Taken at the Flood 1948

    US title There Is a Tide. The 2006 ITV version invents a substantially different crime.

  28. Three Blind Mice and Other Stories 1950

    US-only. Nine stories, three of them Poirot, alongside the novella that became The Mousetrap.

  29. The Under Dog and Other Stories 1951

    US-only Poirot collection with no UK equivalent edition.

  30. Mrs McGinty's Dead 1952

    US title Blood Will Tell. Ariadne Oliver returns and starts complaining about her own detective.

  31. After the Funeral 1953

    US title Funerals Are Fatal.

  32. Hickory Dickory Dock 1955

    US title Hickory Dickory Death.

  33. Dead Man's Folly 1956

    Expanded from the 1954 novella Greenshore Folly, which sat unpublished until 2013.

  34. Cat Among the Pigeons 1959

    A girls' school thriller. Poirot does not turn up until very late, so do not start here.

  35. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding 1960

    UK-only. Five Poirot stories plus one Miss Marple.

  36. Double Sin and Other Stories 1961

    US-only. Eight stories, three of them Poirot: Double Sin, Wasp's Nest and The Double Clue.

  37. The Clocks 1963

    Poirot never visits the crime scene and never interviews a witness. He solves the whole thing from his armchair.

  38. Third Girl 1966

    Poirot dropped into swinging-sixties London and told to his face that he is too old. Ariadne Oliver does the legwork.

  39. Hallowe'en Party 1969

    The basis for the 2023 Branagh film A Haunting in Venice, which keeps little beyond the detective and the party.

  40. Elephants Can Remember 1972

    The last Poirot novel Christie actually wrote, and the last published in her lifetime before Curtain came out of the vault.

  41. Poirot's Early Cases 1974

    Eighteen stories from 1923 to 1936 gathered up in September 1974. Hastings is in most of them, which makes it a natural stop before Curtain.

  42. Curtain: Poirot's Last Case 1975

    Written in the early 1940s, locked in a bank vault for more than thirty years, published September 1975. Set in 1949, back at Styles, with Hastings widowed. Read it last, always.

  43. Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly 2013

    Written in 1954, mislaid in the archive, first published in September 2013. The seed Dead Man's Folly grew from, so it is a curiosity for completists rather than a step.

  44. The Monogram Murders 2014

    Sophie Hannah's first estate-authorised continuation, published 9 September 2014 and set in 1929. Inspector Edward Catchpool narrates in Hastings' place.

  45. Closed Casket 2016

    Hannah's second, set at an Irish country house. Catchpool narrates again.

  46. The Mystery of Three Quarters 2018

    Four strangers are accused of a murder in letters signed with Poirot's name.

  47. The Killings at Kingfisher Hill 2020

    Hannah's fourth continuation.

  48. Hercule Poirot's Silent Night 2023

    A Christmas mystery set in a Norfolk hospital ward in 1931.

  49. The Last Death of the Year 2025

    The sixth and most recent Hannah continuation.

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Why this order?

Read Poirot in publication order. That normally sounds like the lazy default, and here it is the opposite: it is the order Agatha Christie engineered on purpose.

Christie wrote Curtain: Poirot's Last Case in the early 1940s, expecting to be killed in the London raids, and then locked it in a bank vault with instructions that it stay unpublished until after her death. Whenever she died, the series would already have a finished ending waiting, and the royalties would go to her daughter Rosalind. It finally appeared in September 1975, a few months before Christie herself died, and the New York Times ran a front-page obituary for Poirot, the only fictional character ever to get one. Curtain is the single Christie novel whose correct position was fixed by the author before most of the books in front of it existed.

That is exactly why the two orders readers reach for instead both break the series. Composition order would drop Poirot's death somewhere around Evil Under the Sun in 1941, with twelve more Poirot novels still to come after you have watched him die. Internal-chronology order is worse, not better. Curtain is set in 1949, while The Clocks (1963), Third Girl (1966), Hallowe'en Party (1969) and Elephants Can Remember (1972) are all set in the years they were published, so a story-chronology read buries the funeral in the middle of the run. There is also no authoritative timeline to build one from. Christie never kept one, and she deliberately refused to pin down Poirot's age, because doing the arithmetic honestly leaves him well past 100 by the late books. The only real prequel is a short story, The Chocolate Box, from his Belgian police days.

Publication order does not mean reading every page. Poirot cases are almost all self-contained, so you can dip in anywhere in the middle. Two things are worth knowing before you start. The Big Four (1927) is a stitched-together espionage fix-up, twelve Sketch magazine stories reworked into a novel with Campbell Christie's help, and it is where a lot of publication-order readers stall at book five. Skip it and you lose nothing. And The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) is the one that must not be spoiled for you, so get to it before the internet does.

The six Sophie Hannah continuation novels, published from 2014 onward, are an appendix rather than a chapter. They are authorised by the Christie estate but not written by Christie, they are set from 1929 onward, and they hand the narrator's job to a new character, Inspector Edward Catchpool. They sit at the end of this list because that is when they were published. If reading past Poirot's death bothers you, read them before Curtain instead. Nothing in Christie's own arc depends on them either way.

Timeline 1920-2025

Every entry by release year: rows that share a year are a cluster, and the long droughts are called out on the rail.

  1. 1920 The Mysterious Affair at Styles
  2. 1923 The Murder on the Links
  3. 1924 Poirot Investigates
  4. 1926 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
  5. 1927 The Big Four
  6. 1928 The Mystery of the Blue Train
  7. 1930 Black Coffee
  8. 1932 Peril at End House
  9. 1933 Lord Edgware Dies
  10. 1934 Murder on the Orient ExpressThree Act Tragedy
  11. 1935 Death in the Clouds
  12. 1936 The A.B.C. MurdersMurder in MesopotamiaCards on the Table
  13. 1937 Murder in the MewsDumb WitnessDeath on the Nile
  14. 1938 Appointment with Death's Christmas
  15. 1939 The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
  16. 1940 Sad CypressOne, Two, Buckle My Shoe
  17. 1941 Evil Under the Sun
  18. 1942 Five Little Pigs
  19. 4-year gap
  20. 1946 The Hollow
  21. 1947 The Labours of Hercules
  22. 1948 Taken at the Flood
  23. 1950 Three Blind Mice and Other Stories
  24. 1951 The Under Dog and Other Stories
  25. 1952 Mrs McGinty's Dead
  26. 1953 After the Funeral
  27. 1955 Hickory Dickory Dock
  28. 1956 Dead Man's Folly
  29. 1959 Cat Among the Pigeons
  30. 1960 The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
  31. 1961 Double Sin and Other Stories
  32. 1963 The Clocks
  33. 1966 Third Girl
  34. 1969 Hallowe'en Party
  35. 1972 Elephants Can Remember
  36. 1974 Poirot's Early Cases
  37. 1975 Curtain: Poirot's Last Case
  38. 38-year gap
  39. 2013 and the Greenshore Folly
  40. 2014 The Monogram Murders
  41. 2016 Closed Casket
  42. 2018 The Mystery of Three Quarters
  43. 2020 The Killings at Kingfisher Hill
  44. 2023 's Silent Night
  45. 2025 The Last Death of the Year

Where to play it today

  • Every Christie title stays in print in paperback and ebook, from HarperCollins in the UK and William Morrow in the US
  • Buy by original UK title where you can: dozens of these books were renamed for the US, so Lord Edgware Dies and Thirteen at Dinner are the same purchase twice
  • Unabridged audiobooks are on Audible and most library apps, with Hugh Fraser and David Suchet handling much of the Poirot catalogue; narrator assignments vary by title and region
  • Libraries are the cheapest route to the US-only story collections, which go in and out of print; check Libby or Hoopla in your region
  • The ITV Suchet adaptations rotate between BritBox, Prime Video and free ad-supported channels; availability changes constantly, so check JustWatch for your region

Availability changes often and varies by region - links search each platform for Hercule Poirot.

Frequently asked questions

How many Hercule Poirot books are there?

Agatha Christie wrote 33 Poirot novels and 51 Poirot short stories between 1920 and 1975, plus two plays, though only Black Coffee (1930) is an original Christie script; Alibi was Michael Morton's stage version of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The short stories are spread across nine collections, several of them published only in the US, and one novella, Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly, surfaced from the archive in 2013. Add the six authorised continuation novels Sophie Hannah has written since 2014 and this page tracks 50 entries in total.

What order should I read the Hercule Poirot books in?

Publication order. Start with The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) and finish with Curtain: Poirot's Last Case (1975). This is not the lazy default here, it is the order Christie designed: she wrote Curtain in the early 1940s and locked it in a bank vault so the series would always have its ending in place, and it was published last on purpose. Everything between those two covers is close to standalone, so publication order mostly just gives you Poirot aging naturally, Hastings coming and going, and the running gags landing in the right sequence.

Do I have to read the Poirot books in order?

No. Almost every Poirot case is self-contained and can be read alone, which is why people happily start with Murder on the Orient Express or Death on the Nile. Only four positions actually matter. Read The Mysterious Affair at Styles first if you want to meet Poirot and Hastings properly. Read The Murder on the Links before Curtain, since it sets up Hastings' marriage. Get to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd early, before its ending is spoiled for you. And read Curtain last, no matter which route you took to get there.

When should I read Curtain: Poirot's Last Case?

Last. It is Poirot's death, set in 1949 at Styles, the house from the very first book, with an elderly and widowed Hastings at his side. Christie wrote it around 1940 during the Blitz, expecting to be killed in the raids, and put it in a bank vault with instructions to hold it until after her death. It came out in September 1975, and the New York Times gave Poirot a front-page obituary, the only fictional character ever to receive one. Reading it early does not make you clever, it just deletes the ending of thirty other books.

Can I skip The Big Four?

Yes, and most readers should. The Big Four (1927) is not a mystery novel at all: it is twelve stories from The Sketch magazine stitched into a book with help from Christie's brother-in-law Campbell Christie while she was in the middle of a personal crisis. The result is a global-conspiracy thriller with an international criminal cabal, not a detective puzzle, and it is the single most common place publication-order readers give up. No later book requires it. Skip it, or come back to it at the end as a curiosity.

Where should I start with Poirot if I don't want to start at book one?

Peril at End House (1932) is the usual recommendation: sharp, short, Hastings is present, and you need nothing before it. If you want the biggest books instead, Murder on the Orient Express (1934), The A.B.C. Murders (1936) and Death on the Nile (1937) all work cold. Five Little Pigs (1942) is the connoisseur's pick. Do not start with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which lands harder once you know how Christie usually plays fair, or with Cat Among the Pigeons, where Poirot barely appears until the last act.

Is there a chronological Hercule Poirot reading order?

Not a usable one, and building one actively damages the series. Curtain is set in 1949, but The Clocks (1963), Third Girl (1966), Hallowe'en Party (1969) and Elephants Can Remember (1972) are all set in the years they were published, so any story-chronology list puts Poirot's death in the middle with five novels after it. Christie also never maintained an internal timeline and deliberately refused to fix Poirot's age, because a strict reading would make him well past 100 by the last books. The only true prequel is a short story, The Chocolate Box, from his days in the Belgian police. The other order people ask about, the order the books were written in, is barely an order at all: it differs from publication order at only three points. Curtain was written around 1940 and published in 1975, Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly was written in 1954 and not published until September 2013, and Three Act Tragedy reached the US in October 1934 ahead of its January 1935 UK edition. Everything else came out roughly when it was written. But the first of those three differences is fatal on its own, because composition order drops Poirot's death near Evil Under the Sun in 1941 and leaves you twelve more novels about a man you have already buried.

Which Poirot books have Captain Hastings in them?

Hastings appears in eight of the 33 novels: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), The Murder on the Links (1923), The Big Four (1927), Peril at End House (1932), Lord Edgware Dies (1933), The A.B.C. Murders (1936), Dumb Witness (1937) and Curtain (1975). He is also in the play Black Coffee, he narrates all of Poirot Investigates, and he narrates the majority of the Poirot short stories, most of which are collected in Poirot's Early Cases (1974). He vanishes after The Murder on the Links because he marries Dulcie Duveen and moves to Argentina to ranch, which is why Dr Sheppard narrates The Murder of Roger Ackroyd instead. By Curtain he is widowed. The Hastings arc toggle on this page walks that whole friendship from the first meeting to the last day.

Are the Sophie Hannah Poirot books canon, and where do they go?

They are authorised by the Christie estate but not written by Christie, so treat them as an appendix rather than part of the arc. There are six: The Monogram Murders (2014), Closed Casket (2016), The Mystery of Three Quarters (2018), The Killings at Kingfisher Hill (2020), Hercule Poirot's Silent Night (2023) and The Last Death of the Year (2025). They were published after Curtain but are set before it, from 1929 onward, and they replace Hastings with a new narrator, Inspector Edward Catchpool. This page lists them after Curtain because that is publication order, but if reading past Poirot's death bothers you, read them before Curtain instead. Christie's own books never reference them, so neither placement breaks anything.

Does the David Suchet TV series follow the book reading order?

No, and you should not use it as one. Agatha Christie's Poirot ran on ITV from 1989 to 2013 and adapted the novels well out of publication sequence, while relocating almost everything to roughly 1936 regardless of when the book was set. It did copy Christie's best trick, though: Curtain was filmed early and then held back so it could be broadcast last, on 13 November 2013, even though Dead Man's Folly was the final episode actually shot.

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