The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

Six self-contained detective stories make up this collection, subtitled "and a Selection of Entrées," with five cases for Hercule Poirot and one for Miss Jane Marple. The title story sends Poirot to Kings Lacey, a fourteenth-century country manor, where he agrees to spend Christmas in order to recover a stolen royal ruby; amid the carol-singing, the snow, and a vast festive feast, the gem turns up inside the Christmas pudding. The remaining Poirot stories range across settings and tones: "The Mystery of the Spanish Chest" concerns a body discovered in a chest the morning after a party; "The Under Dog" follows the killing of the head of a household; "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" turns on the habits of an anonymous regular diner whose routine suddenly changes; and "The Dream" centers on a reclusive millionaire troubled by a recurring vision of his own death. The single Marple entry, "Greenshaw's Folly," places the village sleuth before a murder at an eccentric Victorian mansion, where a will, an arrow, and locked rooms complicate the question of who could have done it. In her foreword, the author frames the book as a personal indulgence, recalling the Christmases of her youth spent at a relative's grand house. The stories rely on observation, alibis, and small overlooked details rather than action, with the detectives reconstructing each crime through reasoning.