Hercule Poirot sort of obsessive-compulsive" in Poirot. As mentioned in "Curtain" and "The Clocks", he is fond of classical music, particularly Mozart and Bach. 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". Hastings is irritated by the fact that Poirot sometimes conceals important details of his plans, as in "The Big Four". In this novel, Hastings is kept in the dark throughout the climax. This aspect of Poirot is less evident in the later novels,
Hercule Poirot perhaps, Madame, tell you a little more about myself. I am "Hercule Poirot"." The revelation left Mrs Summerhayes unmoved. "What a lovely name," she said kindly. "Greek, isn't it?" Poirot is less active during the cases that take place at the end of his career. Beginning with "Three Act Tragedy" (1934), Christie had perfected during the inter-war years a subgenre of Poirot novel in which the detective himself spent much of the first third of the novel on the periphery of events. In novels such as "Taken at the Flood", "After the Funeral", and "Hickory Dickory Dock", he is even