Poirot has dark hair, which he dyes later in life ( though many of his screen incarnations are portrayed as bald or balding ), and green eyes that are repeatedly described as shining " like a cat's " when he is struck by a clever idea.

In the later novels Christie often uses the word mountebank when Poirot is being assessed by other characters, showing that he has successfully passed himself off as a charlatan or fraud.

After solving a case Poirot has the habit of collecting all people involved into a single room and explaining them the reasoning that led him to the solution, and revealing that the murderer is one of them.

Poirot admits that he has failed to solve a crime " innumerable " times:

Even Poirot acknowledges that Rossakoff has told several wildly varying accounts of her early life.

It has been said that twelve cases related in The Labours of Hercules ( 1947 ) must refer to a different retirement, but the fact that Poirot specifically says that he intends to grow marrows indicates that these stories also take place before Roger Ackroyd, and presumably Poirot closed his agency once he had completed them.

" She first met Poirot in the story Cards on the Table and has been bothering him ever since.

David Suchet has starred as the eponymous detective in Agatha Christie's Poirot in the ITV series since 1989.

The series, adapting several of the best-known Poirot and Marple stories, ran from 4 July 2004 through 15 May 2005, and has since been shown in repeated reruns on NHK and other networks in Japan.

Alongside Hercule Poirot, she is one of the most loved and famous of Christie's characters and has been portrayed numerous times on screen.

The main difference between Ja ' far in " The Three Apples " and later fictional detectives such as Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, however, is that Ja ' far has no actual desire to solve the case.

In Agatha Christie's Poirot series of books, Poirot often has a tisane and accounts this as being the reason why his " little grey cells " are superior to others.

In preparation for the role he says that he has read every novel and short story and compiled an extensive file on Poirot.

Agatha Christie's Poirot is a British television drama that has aired on ITV since 1989.

Shaitana jokes about Poirot's visit to the snuff box exhibition, and claims that he has a better " collection " that Poirot would enjoy: individuals who have got away with murder.

Once the preliminary police work has been done, Poirot reveals Shaitana's strange mention of a " collection " to the other three with whom he played bridge.

As there seems to be no conventional way to prove which of them has committed Shaitana's murder, Poirot suggests that the group of sleuths delve into the past and uncover the murders that the dead man thought he knew about.

Despard, who has been visiting Anne and Rhoda, both of whom fancy him, is a few steps ahead of Poirot and Battle.

* In chapter 15, Major Despard asks Poirot if he has ever had a failure.

Poirot, who has just moved to the town, begins to investigate at Flora's behest.

But Poirot is helpless: the letter has arrived three days later than it was supposed to, just because ABC misspelled Poirot's address.

Later, when Poirot meets and interrogates Cust, he finds that Cust was in Bexhill when Betty was murdered, but he has an alibi, making it impossible for him to kill her.

As early as Murder on the Links, where he still largely depends on clues, Poirot mocks a rival " bloodhound " detective who focuses on the traditional trail of clues that had been established in detective fiction by the example of Sherlock Holmes: footprints, fingerprints and cigar ash.

Poirot had been forcibly retired from the Belgian police force prior to the time he met Hastings in 1916 as a refugee on the case retold in The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

Poirot had never been able to rid himself of the fatal fascination that the Countess held for him.

There is certainly a case for saying that Crooked House ( 1949 ) and Ordeal by Innocence ( 1957 ), which are not Poirot novels at all but so easily could have been, represent a logical endpoint of the general diminution of Poirot himself within the Poirot sequence.

Poirot thus was forced to kill the man himself as otherwise he would have continued his actions and never been officially convicted.

" Poirot and Hastings are reunited in Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, having been earlier reunited in The ABC Murders and Dumb Witness when Hastings arrives in England for business.

There have been a number of radio adaptations of the Poirot stories, most recently twenty seven of them on BBC Radio 4 ( and regularly repeated on BBC 7 ), starring John Moffatt ( Maurice Denham and Peter Sallis have also played Poirot on BBC Radio 4, Mr. Denham in The Mystery of the Blue Train and Mr. Sallis in Hercule Poirot's Christmas ).

After Anne makes her gift suggestions and leaves, Poirot discovers that two pairs of the stockings are missing, confirming his suspicion that Anne is a thief, and seemingly giving weight to his suspicion that she stole from Mrs. Benson and killed her when she feared she had been discovered.

Frustrated with the evident artificiality of the blowpipe, an item that could hardly have been used without being seen by another passenger, Poirot suggests that the means of delivering the dart may have been something else.

Poirot reveals in the denouement that Norman Gale is none other than Anne's new husband, and that his plans-almost certainly including the eventual murder of Anne herself-had been laid well in advance.

The screenplay followed the book closely with some minor changes and some characters omitted: in the adaptation there was only one archeologist, there was no doctor, Jane was a stewardess and in the end Poirot does not match Jane with young archeologist as mentioned in the novel and some other minor changes ( such as in the TV adaptation, Poirot takes Japp to Paris, whereas in the book he takes the French Surete detective and also in the book most of the characters have come from Le Pinet where they have been enjoying some time at the casino, whereas in the adaptation the characters have been at a tennis match in Paris.

In The Agatha Christie Hour, she was portrayed by British actress Angela Easterling, while in Agatha Christie's Poirot, she was portrayed by Pauline Moran.

In Agatha Christie's Poirot, Japp was portrayed by Philip Jackson.

Hastings has been portrayed on film and television by several actors, including Robert Morley in The Alphabet Murders ( 1965 ); Jonathan Cecil in three TV films-Thirteen at Dinner ( 1985 ), Dead Man's Folly ( 1986 ), and Murder in Three Acts ( 1986 ); and most notably, Hugh Fraser, who has portrayed Hastings alongside David Suchet's Poirot in 41 of the 49 episodes of Agatha Christie's Poirot broadcast up until 2003.

Miss Marple, a character created by Agatha Christie and portrayed by Margaret Rutherford, and Margaret's husband Stringer Davis had a cameo role in The Alphabet Murders, a movie based on another of Christie's books and which featured Hercule Poirot.

The book also features Achille Poirot, Hercule's twin brother ( later revealed to be Hercule Poirot himself in ' disguise '), and an eventual double agent, the beautiful Countess Vera Rossakoff, who is portrayed as a stereotypical aventurière and down-at-the-heels Russian ex-aristocrat of the pre-October Revolution period.

However, in an unusual move, the character of Poirot was replaced with Christie's other most famous detective Miss Marple ( portrayed by Margaret Rutherford ), who comes onto the case when she is a juror in the trial of the lodger who is accused of the murder.

* 1998 Black Coffee ( featuring Hercule Poirot, based on the 1930 play ' Black Coffee ')

A more obvious influence on the early Poirot stories is that of Arthur Conan Doyle.

This is how Agatha Christie describes Poirot in The Murder on the Orient Express in the initial pages:

In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot operates as a fairly conventional, clue-based detective, depending on logic, which is represented in his vocabulary by two common phrases: his use of " the little grey cells " and " order and method ".

At the time, of course, she had no idea she would be going on writing Poirot books for many decades to come.

It could be suggested that in Murder on the Orient Express Poirot allows the murderers to escape justice as well, after he discovers that twelve different people stabbed the victim – Mr. Ratchett – in his sleep.

While Poirot is usually paid handsomely by clients who request his help, he is known to also take on cases that may not pay well simply because the mystery interests him.

Beginning with Three Act Tragedy ( 1934 ), Christie had perfected during the inter-war years a sub-genre of Poirot novel in which the detective himself spent much of the first third of the novel on the periphery of events.

In " The Big Four " ( 1927 ) Poirot feigned his death and subsequent funeral in order to launch a surprise attack on the Big Four.

Japp is an Inspector from Scotland Yard and appears in many of the stories trying to solve the cases Poirot is working on.

In between, Poirot solves cases outside England as well, including his most famous case, Murder on the Orient Express ( 1934 ).

" Aside from Roger Ackroyd, the most critically acclaimed Poirot novels appeared from 1932 to 1942, including such acknowledged classics as Murder on the Orient Express, The ABC Murders ( 1935 ), Cards on the Table ( 1936 ), and Death on the Nile ( 1937 ).

Austin Trevor debuted the role of Poirot on screen in the 1931 British film Alibi.

Albert Finney played Poirot in 1974 in the cinematic version of Murder on the Orient Express.

Peter Ustinov played Poirot a total of six times, starting with Death on the Nile ( 1978 ).