'Poirot Investigates', originally published in 1924, is a collection of fourteen Poirot stories, told over 211 pages. They are short, energetic, playful pieces, all centring around Poirot's brilliance in solving apparently unsolvable puzzles. 

At an average of fifteen pages per story, there isn't a lot of space for anything more than exposition, investigation and resolution - think the kind of thirty-minute TV mystery shows that were pumped out in the 1970's - but they're delivered with brio, self-confidence and humour that makes them engaging.

The subjects of the stories range widely. We have spies, blackmailers, jewel thieves, cursed Egyptian tombs, a kidnapped Prime Minister and opportunistic but devilishly cunning murders.

The only thing that they have in common is that they let Hercule Poirot play his part of Magician Detective, the man who can and does solve crimes while sitting at his desk with his eyes closed.

I began to see Poirot like this:

What pulls the stories together, and what I found more interesting than the puzzles posed, is the way Poirot and Hastings are revealed to us. With rapid, deft strokes, Christie gives us a clear portrait of both men and the relationship between them. 

Poirot, the small man with the large ego, a compulsion for neatness, a self-serving sense of humour and an analytical mind that treats people and their actions as no more than puzzle pieces. A man whose vanity is displayed as much in his refusal to speak English fluently as his luxurious moustaches. He is bright but often less than kind. My main impression of him? M. Poirot, il est un connard, non?

Christie skilfully manages to give us Hastings through his own eyes and still present someone different from the man Hastings sees when he looks in the mirror. He's an affable, reliable man, the epitome of his class, one step up from Bertie Wooster. Woman are an alien species to him but he is always willing to worship at the altar of the auburn-haired beauty, provided she's a woman of good family and character and not one of these 'new' women. It was pointed out to me that he's a perfect example of the Dunning-Krugar effect, a cognitive bias that allows a person of low ability to sustain an internal illusion of superiority.

The early stories read like playful trope twists on Sherlock Holmes stories. They all read as if Christie is having fun playing with ideas and using her stories as a lab for testing them out. Yet, taken together, they give a picture of this odd couple that is very different from Holmes and Watson and much more endearing.

The first chapter filled with the dry, quiet, patient, gentle humour of the long friendship between Walt Longmire and Henry Standingbear as they try to find a new location for Katie's wedding when the venue on the Reservation becomes unavailable at the last minute.

There's a strong sense of place, a feeling of family and the easy companionship that comes from doing something important but not too challenging. Then, just as I was relaxing with Walt and Henry, taking in the beauty of the landscape, they see someone die and everything changes.

For me, this captures the spirit of the Longmire stories: men doing their best, taking their ease where they can but always keeping a weather eye for the next piece of misery the world will throw their way.

It brings me comfort to be back in Kate Shugak land. That's odd really as Dana Stabenow doesn't write cosy mysteries. Her books have very bad people in them. She confronts hate, corruption, misogyny, racism, greed and a hunger for violence. She looks at Alaska and sees both its beauty and its lethal indifference. She doesn't whitewash politics or history and she understands that even the people who think of themselves as the good guys sometimes betray themselves and the things they believe in.

So why does reading a Kate Shugak story bring me comfort?

Because, at the heart of almost all of the stories, there is a refusal to abandon hope, to find the courage to persist and a determination not to look away. There's also friendship, community, love, independence and honesty. It's a home I'd like to have. A home I'd like to be able to live up to even though I know I'd probably fail.

So, after a prologue and two chapters where am I?

Firstly, it looks like Dana Stabenow is going to dig in to the human consequences of one of the worst evils Trump has created, one that I think the rest of the world looks at and wonders why the rest of America allows it: the separation of children from their parents at the border. Keeping children in cages, sleeping on concrete floors.  Destroying family by dispersing children across America without documenting where they went or who their parents were. All of it overseen by ICE, troops own SS.

Of course, that's my, entirely political neutral and totally objective, summary, not Stabelnow's. She's a more 'show don't tell' writer, so her proluge deal with two children, a brother and a sister, separated from their mother, kept in cages and then sold on to human traffickers.  Then she gives me a chapter showing the fast, instinctive response of two young people who face a fierce ice storm to rescue any survivors of a  plane crash, followed by a chapter with Kate at home, cooking and discussing the merits of college and the problems with the State defunding education. 

So, I know I'm home. I know things are going to get fraught. And I know I'm going to have to exercise control not to snarf the whole book down in a day, like a Labrador with fresh meat.

Well, not quite a cliff-hanger ending but not quite a free-standing novel either. More like Part 1 of a spectacular Season Finale of a long-running show.

I'm very glad that Part 2. 'Battle Ground' will be in my library on 29th September.

here's only a quarter of the book left- ok that's still another four hours of audiobook - BUT it feels like I'm heading towards a cliff-hanger ending. I know the next book is out in a couple of months but I still hope I'm not left hanging