There has been some discussion on this board about Hercule Poirot vs. Miss Jane Marple. This book is unusual in some ways, because Christie combines a couple of techniques she uses in other books. She writes more often in third person than in first person, and usually the books in first person feature a non-series detective. Some books combine one of the series detectives with an individual who acts as a sort of partner to the main detective (The 4:50 From Paddington is a case in point), and Hastings acts as narrator in a lot of the Poirot mysteries.
Do you feel that Christie went into her books with a sense of which detective she was going to feature? If so, do you think her choice of detective influenced the way she wrote the individual books or did she wait to see which way the book was going before she decided which of her detectives would best fit the plot?
In this book, however much of it you have read so far, do you feel that the plot is essentially a "Poirot" plot or would this book have worked better with a non-series detective, with Poirot assisted by Hastings or Ariadne Oliver, or with Miss Marple?
