Ian Roberts’s Reviews > Curtain > Status Update

When Arthur goes down to dinner, he analyzes all of the possible suspects. None, however seem to give off the obvious “crazy murderer” trope. After dinner, Arthur’s daughter, Judith speaks with Arthur about the occurrences of murder that had been recently happening, and it seems as if the public has no idea that all of the murders are, in fact being committed by one single person and not multiple.

So far, Arthur and Poirot have gone over many methods as to how they could catch the murderer, but without context to the situation, it is hard to capture them. We do not know the murderer’s identity, we don’t know their motive and we have no traits to be looking for within a possible suspect. In spite of this, Poirot seems rather confident that he’ll be able to solve this case.

This book starts off following Arthur Hastings, an old friend of Poirot’s. We soon learn that Poirot has aged over time and is becoming an old man, but despite his pains he wanted to meet up with his friend Hastings again. When Hastings arrives in Styles, the town Poirot is in, we are introduced to the keeper of the inn keeper, and just before we are able to meet Poirot again the chapter stops.