The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding is actually a collection of some of Agatha Christies short stories. Five of them are tales of Poirot `The Mystery of the Spanish Chest', `The Underdog', `Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds', `The Dream' and the title tale itself. The last one `Greenshaw's Folly' stars Miss Marple, my favourite Christie character, herself. The title tale is indeed very Christmas filled and is murder meets great theft containing three brilliant plot twists within 60 pages which I think is remarkable. `The Mystery of the Spanish Chest' had be baffled as to how six guests could eat dinner with one of their spouses murdered in a chest in the same room, again so, so clever. `The Underdog' is a very interesting tale of women's intuition and how having it cannot prove a thing, even if it might (note I say might not it is) be right.
The latter three were interesting clever, highly readable and slightly annoying in one. As though it was very interesting to see Christie use one specific plot device (which I cant say or you wont need to read them and they are charming) and change it so much in three ways I did feel it was a shame to have them be the last three tales as it could have been mixed up more. It did show what a genius of murderous mayhem she could be and how many ways one thing could be reworked; I would have just placed a few different methods in between. It's a small critique though as I didn't guess any of the endings in any of these three and they all kept me reading until the small hours.