Poirot is Christie's most famous and longest-running character, appearing in 33 novels, two plays (Black Coffee and Alibi), and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975.

Poirot's name was derived from two other fictional detectives of the time: Marie Belloc Lowndes's Hercule Popeau and Frank Howel Evans's Monsieur Poiret, a retired French police officer living in London.

[4] At the time of Christie's writing, it was considered patriotic to express sympathy towards the Belgians,[5] since the invasion of their country had constituted Britain's casus belli for entering World War I, and British wartime propaganda emphasised the "Rape of Belgium".

Poirot has green eyes that are repeatedly described as shining "like a cat's" when he is struck by a clever idea,[10] and dark hair, which he dyes later in life.

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

We left the main road and wound into the leafy fastnesses of the hills, till we reached a little hamlet and an isolated white villa high on the hillside.

Christie wrote that Poirot is a Catholic by birth,[33] but not much is described about his later religious convictions, except sporadic references to his "going to church" and occasional invocations of "le bon Dieu".

[b] Christie provides little information regarding Poirot's childhood, only mentioning in Three Act Tragedy that he comes from a large family with little wealth, and has at least one younger sister.

[37] Very little mention is made about this part of his life, but in "The Nemean Lion" (1939) Poirot refers to a Belgian case of his in which "a wealthy soap manufacturer ... poisoned his wife in order to be free to marry his secretary".

So much had he become the rage that every rich woman who had mislaid a bracelet or lost a pet kitten rushed to secure the services of the great Hercule Poirot.

His first case in this period was "The Affair at the Victory Ball", which allowed Poirot to enter high society and begin his career as a private detective.

Most of the cases covered by Poirot's private detective agency take place before his retirement to attempt to grow larger marrows, at which time he solves The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

In terms of a rudimentary chronology, Poirot speaks of retiring to grow marrows in Chapter 18 of The Big Four[50] (1927) which places that novel out of published order before Roger Ackroyd.

He continues to employ his secretary, Miss Lemon, at the time of the cases retold in Hickory Dickory Dock and Dead Man's Folly, which take place in the mid-1950s.

In novels such as Taken at the Flood, After the Funeral, and Hickory Dickory Dock, he is even less in evidence, frequently passing the duties of main interviewing detective to a subsidiary character.

Crooked House (1949) and Ordeal by Innocence (1957), which could easily have been Poirot novels, represent a logical endpoint of the general diminution of his presence in such works.

[53][page needed] In the absence of a more appropriate puzzle, he solves such inconsequential domestic riddles as the presence of three pieces of orange peel in his umbrella stand.

In Hickory Dickory Dock, he investigates the strange goings-on in a student hostel, while in Third Girl (1966) he is forced into contact with the smart set of Chelsea youths.

Poirot regards Hastings as a poor private detective, not particularly intelligent, yet helpful in his way of being fooled by the criminal or seeing things the way the average man would see them and for his tendency to unknowingly "stumble" onto the truth.

Hastings is capable of great bravery and courage, facing death unflinchingly when confronted by The Big Four and displaying unwavering loyalty towards Poirot.

The two are an airtight team until Hastings meets and marries Dulcie Duveen, a beautiful music hall performer half his age, after investigating the Murder on the Links.

The novel was called The Monogram Murders, and was set in the late 1920s, placing it chronologically between The Mystery of the Blue Train and Peril at End House.

[63][64][65][66] American playwright Ken Ludwig adapted Murder on the Orient Express into a play, which premiered at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey on 14 March 2017.

[67] Other notable actors who have portrayed Poirot on stage include Ronnie Barker,[68] Leonard Rossiter,[69] Ronald Magill,[70] Patrick Cargill[71] and Alfred Marks.

Much of the story, set in modern times, was played for comedy, with Poirot investigating the murders while evading the attempts by Hastings (Robert Morley) and the police to get him out of England and back to Belgium.

[75] Kenneth Branagh played Poirot in film adaptations of Murder on the Orient Express in 2017, Death on the Nile in 2022, and A Haunting in Venice, based on the novel Hallowe'en Party, in 2023.

"No one could've guessed then that the series would span a quarter-century or that the classically trained Suchet would complete the entire catalogue of whodunits featuring the eccentric Belgian investigator, including 33 novels and dozens of short stories.

[83] The cast included Jane Asher as Mrs. Hubbard, Jay Benedict as Monsieur Bouc, Ruta Gedmintas as Countess Andrenyi, Sophie Okonedo as Mary Debenham, Eddie Marsan as Ratchett, Walles Hamonde as Hector MacQueen, Paterson Joseph as Colonel Arbuthnot, Rula Lenska as Princess Dragimiroff and Art Malik as the Narrator.

A 1945 radio series of at least 13 original half-hour episodes (none of which apparently adapt any Christie stories) transferred Poirot from London to New York and starred character actor Harold Huber,[88] perhaps better known for his appearances as a police officer in various Charlie Chan films.

[90] In season 2, episode 4 of TVFPlay's Indian web series Permanent Roommates, one of the characters refers to Hercule Poirot as her inspiration while she attempts to solve the mystery of the cheating spouse.