I love Masterpiece Mystery, and especially the Agatha Christie stuff, but there are some things about the Poirot stories that bug me a little bit. The thing is that they really seem like written material, rather than a story that could have happened. You see, with Miss Marple, there is a real gathering of evidence and trapping of killers, etc.; but with Poirot, so often he seems to pull the solution out of thin air, or to be crude about it, right out of his ass.
So here’s the problem with this figuring-it-all-out-in-your-head approach: There’s no proof, and you could never get a conviction on that kind of evidence, so there’s no reason for the murderer to ever admit to it or even worry about prosecution. I mean, hey: if we couldn’t get a conviction in the OJ Simpson or Casey Anthony trials, then what chance has Poirot of convicting anyone with his wild theories? He just figures it out in his head, and then he says the solution, but there’s never any proof with him. And so often, the solution seems like it’s formed out of stuff he couldn’t possibly really know anyway. Because when you think about it, he never even really knows any of the people he’s dealing with: they’re complete strangers! At least with Miss Marple, she’s usually somewhat familiar with everyone to a certain extent, even if it’s only through hearsay, or else she sees them as another version of someone she knows from St. Mary Mead, which is presented as a sort-of microcosm of the world at large, so she figures them out from practical experience of human nature, etc. But with Poirot, this rarely seems to be the case; he simply seems to know it all, somehow, because he’s a “know-it-all”. But again, that’s not proof.
The other thing that bothers me about Poirot is this: why doesn’t the murderer just kill him? They’re already killing everyone else in an attempt to “get away with it”, so why not him? He’s always announcing how he’ll figure it all out and catch the murderer, etc., but the local police never want to co-operate, and they never think he’s right about anything until the very end anyway; plus the local authorities are usually incompetent to boot, so if Poirot were to be disposed of, the murderer would most likely get away with it. So why don’t they kill him? He’s certainly smug, annoying, arrogant and self-satisfied enough to warrant it in any case! Hell, I’ll bet all would be forgiven by the local police inspector if the murderer would simply get rid of this meddling, intrusive busybody who’s trying to show them up publicly. Or at least, that’s the sense I get from watching how police-type agencies hate working together. (Remember how the FBI, the CIA and the NSA never used to share any info until after the panty-bomber case? Yeah, me too.)
So when you think about it, especially when you consider how “famous” he is, and how he has the reputation to “always get his man”, it’s simply amazing that nobody has killed Poirot yet! He sticks out like a sore thumb, he enrages the local officials and investigators, and he always brags about how he’s going to catch the killer. So isn’t all that stuff just like wearing a target on your back? I’m surprised nobody ever took a serious shot at it. He’s asking for it!
