The same old thing from Agatha, but not one of her finest. It’s the usual lack of character development with a load of posh and/or annoying people with some casual racism thrown in. My favourite unintentionally funny line was “He was friendly soul, with a cockney accent and mercifully free from any kind of inferiority complex”.
Poirot is called to investigate a spate of kleptomania at a student hostel run by the sister of his secretary Miss Lemon. Then the crimes develop further.
I was unconvinced by the finale and Poirot’s method of solving this seemed frankly even less plausible than normal. It probably didn’t help that I was reading a kindle edition full of spelling mistakes and errors with the paragraphing. I was reading on another blog that the Italian title, moreover, was Poirot si annoia, or Poirot is Bored – I’m not surprised. Read one of her other better ones before reading this.
Rotten Books 
Good title though, isn’t it, Kerry? In the hands of Agatha Christie even the title of a nursery rhyme can sound sinister.
Yes she has done a lot of books with nursery rhyme titles like A Pocketful of Rye but this has the most dubious link it’s simply that the students live in Hickory Road!
Easy reading when you don’t want anything challenging. The vocabulary must be very limited as I can read them quite easily in French. Sorry if that sounds pretentious.
Not at all, I read one in Spanish because knowing the story and the vocabulary makes it easy too. Still like them more in English though!