The Guests of Hercules is a melodramatic page-turner about the young Greek hero. Hercules is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmene. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and his numerous far-ranging adventures. Excerpt: "Long shadows of late afternoon lay straight and thin across the garden path; shadows of beech trees that ranged themselves in an undeviating line, like an inner wall Within the convent wall of brick; and the soaring trees were very old, as old perhaps as the convent itself, whose stone had the same soft tints of faded red and brown as the autumn leaves which sparsely jeweled the beeches' silver."

In this set of short stories, Poirot sets himself a challenge before he retires – to solve 12 cases which correspond with the labours of his classical Greek namesake...