I love Agatha Christie, I have been reading since I was a kid. Not that they came out when I was a kid mind you!
For me, Poirot will always be number 1 because of his heart, and his flaws.
He’s extremely observant and has a profound understanding of human behavior but he’s also immensely compassionate. Sherlock Holmes was brilliant at interpreting physical and materialistic evidence but Poirot was a master at understanding people’s thought processes using astute psychology and intuition. He can interact with victims, suspects and murderers in a way that probably wouldn’t occur to e.g. Holmes.
No offence to Sherlock, but Poirot’s game is to not just catch the culprit but to clear and support the ones who are innocent and who have to go on living with what’s happened. He never hesitates to talk about hope, faith and redemption, and that sets him apart to me. And it’s remarkable how he manages to be so kind and so (often comically) arrogant at the same time.
Poirot makes for a much more engaging and stimulating murder mystery for me.
And for fans of the series it is always rewarding when Poirot explains how he made progress in the investigation at the conclusion of each book spot on.
I haven’t read the books in a very long time but I think Agatha Christie’s Poirot relied heavily on characters to solve the murder and thus we were often left in awe of how well Poirot understood what went on in people’s mind, an arduous task to say the least, and how he sometimes used what he knew to artfully extract information instead of any scientific knowledge be it by: chemistry, anatomy, or any of his other abilities.
I also like how he is an outsider in more than one respect. He is obviously very much alone “at the top” with his cognitive abilities but it’s interesting how he is originally also a refugee of WW1 and how he subsequently sets up his practice in London. How he approaches English society. The language, the customs, the laws, and how he befriends Hastings, Lemon, Japp and Ariadne. It’s very much a success story and he’s a perfect character to drop into vastly different contexts.
David Suchet is my favorite actor in this role, by the way. I think he nails both Poirot’s stern and warm sides, and he can convincingly play him as both passionate and subtle. I also love the humor and relationships between him, Japp and Hastings.
Poirot often worked without evidence, clues, patterns, and tracks and also solved crimes without visiting the crime scene and I can’t say the same for Holmes. Also, I personally don’t believe any of Sherlock’s best plots were nearly as intricate as Poirot’s best.
But this is probably a personal bias.
~XO