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This is the spoiler thread for The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding.

These short stories are a welcome change from the intensity of Portrait of Murderer. The Christmas pudding one was a perfect contrast: set at Christmas with family gathered at big estate house, but in this lighter pudding story, the family members actually like, care about and support each other.

ChrisGA wrote: "These short stories are a welcome change from the intensity of Portrait of Murderer. The Christmas pudding one was a perfect contrast: set at Christmas with family gathered at big estate house, but..."

Yes! I found it a mental palate cleanser after trying to get through “Portrait�� - afraid I threw in the towel on that one.

Just finished, and I enjoyed these stories, but as always with a collection, some are better. I had seen “Spanish Chest�� on tv, but not read before, so I enjoyed that very much. I thought “Four and Twenty Blackbirds�� very interesting and well done, intricately but tightly plotted, good premise, etc. I thought the Miss Marple story, “Greenshaw’s Folly��, was the weakest, as it had no connection to the others, seemed rather rushed, too much coincidence.

I did wonder about the lack of Bridget's pulse, but then that was explained later. I'm assuming it was possible, but not sure it would be safe.

Jill wrote: "I did wonder about the lack of Bridget's pulse, but then that was explained later. I'm assuming it was possible, but not sure it would be safe."

Exactly!

I really enjoyed this one (I just read the Adventure of the Christmas Pudding) and thought it was a lovely little tableau of the traditional English Christmas with just the right amount of "foreigners" to make it interesting. In this case Poirot and Desmond, the latter being foreign in the sense that he is not "one of them", add an edge to the family party, and the "sister" who is slid in beneath our notice.

The plot issue I stumble over is, if this wasn't meant to be the Christmas pudding, why are all the other bits in it? The bachelors button, the coin, etc...I don't think they'd have been washed off and pushed into the substitute pudding, would they?

Really enjoyed reading this one at this time of year.

I wondered about the items in the substitute pudding also. .would they have put them in a pudding they planned to serve later?

My Kindle copy was removed when I allowed Kindle Unlimited to lapse, but is it possible that the original Christmas pudding was dropped before it was cooked? They take some hours to cook, and if it had already been cooked, there wouldn't have been time to cook the spare one (which presumably they wouldn't cook until the day it was to be served). If so, the buttons etc could be retrieved from the gloop on the floor, and shoved into the spare pudding before it was cooked and solidified.

That makes sense. Thanks.

For once I´m jumping into this buddy read, as I was reading this with another group too. I liked the little stories which I partly knew, as I remember The Christmas Pudding (perhaps from the Suchet series?), and guessed a part of the Miss Marple mystery.