But if we're doing autre temps, autre moeurs, a 1938 review of Poirot's Christmas stated that "the business of the appalling shriek will probably make no mystery for the average reader". Oh yes it will. I'm still not sure what the solution of that is, when what was evidently common knowledge 80 years ago has completely vanished.
Will also disagree with the contemporary TLS reviewer who avers that "Poirot in his retirement is becoming too much of a colourless expert. One feels a nostalgic longing for the days when he baited his 'good friend' and butt, Hastings, when he spoke malaprop English and astonished strangers by his intellectual arrogance." I'm reading a Hastings mystery now and lord, the man is a stick.
