Arthur Hastings Arthur Hastings Captain Arthur J. M. Hastings, OBE, is a fictional character created by Agatha Christie as the companion-chronicler and best friend of the Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. He is first introduced in Christie's 1920 novel "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" and appears as a character in eight other Poirot novels and plays, in addition to being the narrator of several others. Hastings is today strongly associated with Poirot, due more to the changes in the television adaptations compared to the novels. Many of the early TV episodes of "Agatha Christie's Poirot" were adaptations of short stories, in most of
Agatha Christie's Poirot of the final episode, only slightly short of the target he had set himself (in a 2007 interview) of completing the entire canon before his 65th birthday. The short stories and novellas "The Submarine Plans", "The Market Basing Mystery", "Christmas Adventure," "The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest," "The Second Gong," "The Incident of the Dog's Ball," and "Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly" were not filmed in their original short story format, as Agatha Christie later rewrote these stories as novellas or novels ("The Incredible Theft", "Murder in the Mews", "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding", "The Mystery of the