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I feel like this book's biggest strength is its worldbuilding. A post-nuclear apocalypse wasteland ruled by nihilistic vampires? Sign me up. The author is clearly a big fan of Hammer films, considering there's a Count Lee (hi, Christopher!) and even a character named Larmica. There's also a guy named Greco Rohman, in case you weren't already sold on the cheese.

I did feel that the story structure let it down somewhat, as it veered off track when Rei-Ginsei and his gang were introduced, which led to a bit of a stall in the pacing, though it picks up again later. The English translation felt a bit odd at points, with a noticeable repetition of certain phrases—prolly present in the original as well. I can see why some people had trouble getting into this, but the world here is just a ton of fun. It was a pulpy good time, and I'm looking forward to the rest, hopefully with a more polished English translation.

I quite liked this one, one of the rare Poirot stories where I was able to figure out how it happened and why, probably due to the generous amount of clues. The setting and the cast made this more fun than the usual fare, it takes its time introducing you to everyone and there's a nice slow build up before the murder actually happens. There's a nice little web of relationships here and almost every character gets their own slice of development which gives this one a more intimate feel and a nice helping of character drama throughout. There's a lot of tension in this one partially because of the setting but also because there are a lot of potential suspects - though I do feel it's a bit more easy to deduce what's going on here compared to a lot of other Poirot stories. It was nice seeing Poirot's inner matchmaker at work again, perhaps he should've dabbled in that trade a bit more.