Hercule Poirot met his lifelong friend, Captain Arthur Hastings, and solved the first of his cases to be published, "The Mysterious Affair at Styles". It is clear that Hastings and Poirot are already friends when they meet in Chapter 2 of the novel, as Hastings tells Cynthia that he has not seen him for "some years". Particulars such as the date of 1916 for the case and that Hastings had met Poirot in Belgium, are given in "Curtain: Poirot's Last Case", Chapter 1. After that case, Poirot apparently came to the attention of the British secret service and undertook cases for the
Agatha Christie's Poirot that the story was first published in book format in "The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories" (published in the United States in 1939). Although the story is now associated with Parker Pyne, it was included in the 2008 omnibus volume "Hercule Poirot: the Complete Short Stories", which was the first public association of the story with Hercule Poirot since the original Strand Magazine publication of 1936. Aside from "Poirot and the Regatta Mystery", the one authentic Hercule Poirot story not included in any form, whole or partial, in the "Agatha Christie's Poirot" series is the 1930 play "Black Coffee". Although