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
Hercule Poirot on the Orient Express" (1934). Hercule Poirot became famous in 1926 with the publication of "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd", whose surprising solution proved controversial. The novel is still among the most famous of all detective novels: Edmund Wilson alludes to it in the title of his well-known attack on detective fiction, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" Aside from "Roger Ackroyd", the most critically acclaimed Poirot novels appeared from 1932 to 1942, including "Murder on the Orient Express", "The ABC Murders" (1935), "Cards on the Table" (1936), and "Death on the Nile" (1937), a tale of multiple homicide upon