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Luttrell, at the request of his old (and now elderly) confrere. The plot is simplicity itself: we begin with Arthur Hastings returning to Styles, now run as a hotel by Colonel and Mrs. Yes, there are all manner of anachronisms (from, er, research purposes elsewhere I know that the practice of hanging criminals was abandoned before the apparent setting of this story) and it exists in a curiously airless, trapped-in-amber milieu that could be anything from 1924 to some sort of 21st century Technology Detox Camp, but I’m happy to allow certain things for the sheer quality of this experience. Whatever the true motivation was behind Christie writing Curtain in the 1940s - I’ve seen it claimed both that she wanted to guarantee a strong ending to the character were she to be killed herself in the Blitz, and that she simply loved the idea when it came to her and felt the need to write it while it was fresh - I can’t deny that it’s somewhat wonderful to have author and sleuth both back on their game. Hallowe’en Party (1969) and Elephants Can Remember (1972) would have been fairly damning epitaphs for the career of the little Belgian, and for Dame Agatha herself, and yet when reading them it’s clear that Poirot is supposed to still be in his pomp and magnificence. Given the inevitable decline in Agatha Christie’s powers as her career drew to a close, there’s a moderate irony in that fact that she had come off probably the most successful decade in the history of detective fiction writing when she opted to portray Hercule Poirot at his apparent worst.