His moustache was very stiff and military. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. 'He was hardly more than five feet four inches but carried himself with great dignity. Here is how Captain Arthur Hastings first describes Poirot: On publication of this novel, Poirot was the only fictional character to be given an obituary in The New York Times Aug'Hercule Poirot is Dead Famed Belgian Detective'. His first published appearance was in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (published 1920) and his last was in Curtain (published 1975, the year before Christie died). Not only did his coming from a country occupied by Germany provide a very good reason why such a skilled detective would be out of work and available to solve mysteries at an English country house, but also at the time of writing it was considered patriotic to express sympathy with the Belgians – since the invasion of their country had constituted Britain's casus belli for entering World War I. Poirot's being a Belgian, unlike the above-mentioned models, is clearly the result of the first book being written in 1916 (though only published in 1920).

In chapter 4 of the second Inspector Hanaud novel, 'The House of the Arrow' (1924), Hanaud declares sanctimoniously to the heroine, 'You are wise, Mademoiselle… For, after all, I am Hanaud.

Mason's fictional detective – Inspector Hanaud of the French Sûreté-who, first appearing in the 1910 novel 'At the Villa Rose,' predates the writing of the first Poirot novel by six years. In An Autobiography Christie admits that 'I was still writing in the Sherlock Holmes tradition – eccentric detective, stooge assistant, with a Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp.' Poirot also bears a striking resemblance to A. A more obvious influence on the early Poirot stories is that of Arthur Conan Doyle. His character was based on two other fictional detectives of the time: Marie Belloc Lowndes' Hercule Popeau and Frank Howel Evans' Monsieur Poiret, a retired French police officer living in London.

Poirot death in mesopotamia