Poirot Investigates
by Agatha Christie (The Bodley Head, 1924); audiobook read by David Suchet (HarperAudio, 2012)
Poirot is well suited to the short story form—a less faceted character than Holmes but more endearing and also more inclined to solve cases from the evidence at hand. Hastings, however, narrates like Bertie Wooster and makes a poor Watson substitute.
Blott on the Landscape
by Tom Sharpe (Secker & Warburg, 1975); audiobook read by David Suchet (AudioGO, 2011)
Sharpe weaves plot strands like Wodehouse and is similarly dexterous in his use of prose. He is coarse, though, and often vulgar, his characters toilet plungered en masse from the unseemly depths of human nature. Nonetheless, ‘Blott’ executes a dizzying comedic spiral.