Holtorf ’ s description of the archaeologist as a detective is very similar to Christie ’ s Poirot who is hugely observant and is very careful to look at the small details as they often impart the most information.

Hercule Poirot (; ) is a fictional Belgian detective, created by Agatha Christie.

Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels, one play, and more than 50 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.

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

On publication of the latter, Poirot was the only fictional character to be given an obituary in the New York Times ; 6 August 1975 " Hercule Poirot is Dead ; Famed Belgian Detective ".

Here is how Captain Arthur Hastings first describes Poirot:

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

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.

Poirot is extremely punctual and carries a turnip pocket watch almost to the end of his career.

Poirot, as mentioned in Curtain and The Clocks, is extremely fond of classical music, particularly Mozart and Bach.

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 ".

Irritating to Hastings is the fact that Poirot will sometimes conceal from him important details of his plans, as in The Big Four where Hastings is kept in the dark throughout the climax.

This aspect of Poirot is less evident in the later novels, partly because there is rarely a narrator so there is no one for Poirot to mislead.

Poirot is also willing to appear more foreign or vain than he really is in an effort to make people underestimate him.

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.

The first Hercule Poirot began with tram passengers and Belgian refugees.

: " By the step leading up into the sleeping-car stood a young Belgian lieutenant, resplendent in uniform, conversing with a small man ( Hercule Poirot ) muffled up to the ears of whom nothing was visible but a pink-tipped nose and the two points of an upward-curled moustache.

Christie wrote little of Poirot ’ s childhood though in Three Act Tragedy she writes that he comes from a large family with little wealth.

In the short story The Chocolate Box ( 1923 ) Poirot provides Captain Arthur Hastings with an account of what he considers to be his only failure.

Poirot later became smitten with the woman and allowed her to escape justice.

In The Nemean Lion, he sided with the criminal, Miss Amy Carnaby, and saved her from having to face justice by blackmailing his client Sir Joseph Hoggins, who himself was plotting murder and was unwise enough to let Poirot discover this.

Just a case or two, just one case more – the Prima Donna ’ s farewell performance won ’ t be in it with yours, Poirot.

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.

Notably, during this time his physical characteristics also change dramatically, and by the time Arthur Hastings meets Poirot again in Curtain, he looks very different from his previous appearances, having become thin with age and with obviously dyed hair.

Japp is outgoing, loud and sometimes inconsiderate by nature, and his relationship with the bourgeois Belgian is one of the stranger aspects of Poirot ’ s world.

These favours usually entail Poirot being supplied with cases that would interest him.

Hercule Poirot became famous with the publication, in 1926, of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, whose surprising solution proved controversial.

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

In Agatha Christie's, " Appointment with Death " ( 1938 ), the mysterious and enigmatic Petra is the setting for a murder mystery featuring Hercule Poirot.

Suchet appeared as Inspector Japp in the 1985 film adaptation of Lord Edgware Dies, screen-name Thirteen at Dinner, with Peter Ustinov portraying Poirot.

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.

At this point, Mrs. Lorrimer contacts Poirot with surprising news.

He testifies that he saw Roberts inject Lorrimer with a syringe ; a syringe, Poirot reveals, full of a lethal anaesthetic.

There are delightful passages when Poirot anxiously compares other moustaches with his own and awards his own the palm, when his lips are forced to utter the unaccustomed words ' I was in error ', when Mrs. Oliver, famous authoress, discourses upon art and craft of fiction.

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.

Not content with solving the mystery, Poirot invites Mr. Clancy to the Denouncement where he gleefully allows the Novelist to see how a Real Life Detective solves a case, to both men's great enjoyment, and finally in a single stroke Poirot makes a romantic match by pairing off Jane Grey with the younger of the archaeologists.

An impatient man, whose lack of imagination is often playfully ridiculed by Poirot.

Poirot sees a marble seat in the recess whose arm-ends are carved in the form of lions ' heads and wonders if they could have caused the wound to Reedburn's head however the angle at which the body was lying and the lack of blood on the seat works against this theory.

Hastings's appearances in Poirot's later novels are restricted to a few cases in which he participates on his periodic returns to England from Argentina ; Poirot comments in The ABC Murders that he enjoys Hastings's visits because he always has his most interesting cases when Hastings is with him.

Poirot views the link between a disappearing cook and a murder to be one of his most interesting cases, and he frames the cheque sent by Mr. Todd for his consulting fee as a reminder of it.