I feel that this was one of the weakest of the Poirot stories. There doesn't really seem to be much for him to do at all until nearly the end, the whole thing being very much devoid of substance. The problem with serial killers is that they don't know their victims, so you don't get the group of suspects with their various motives and secrets to analyse. In this case there isn't even much in the way of a trail of clues, so Poirot spends a lot of the book just sitting around. Waiting for the police to do the legwork, waiting for the killer to strike again and provide more clues. The case is really not suited to his methods at all, although he does of course figure it out in the end.
Speaking of the end, I found it fairly unsatisfying. The twist worked in a technical sense, but I didn't care about it at all. I guess I was just never really invested in the story or the characters, so when it turned out differently than expected it lacked impact. It could have worked much better, I feel, if Poirot had investigate each of the killings in his usual style, despite their being committed by a single person. It would have tied the ending together better and given more meat to the story.
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