The Labours of Hercules

Hercule Poirot resolves to take on twelve final cases before retirement and each one corresponds to one of the twelve labours of his Greek namesake. The short stories were initially serialised from 1939 in the Strand Magazine in the UK and This Week and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in the US (under different titles). The Capture of Cerberus was rejected by the UK magazine and Christie rewrote it for the book collection. The original version was only discovered in 2009 by John Curran (see Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks).

The Capture of Cerberus also features an appearance from Countess Vera Rossakoff, a dangerous and beautiful woman, Poirot’s only acknowledged love interest.

The collection was adapted for TV in 2013 as part of the final series of Agatha Christie's Poirot starring David Suchet, in which the different stories were woven together to make one film.