Hercule Poirot available to solve mysteries at an English country house. At the time of Christie's writing, it was considered patriotic to express sympathy towards the Belgians, since the invasion of their country had constituted Britain's "casus belli" for entering World War I, and British wartime propaganda emphasised the "Rape of Belgium". Poirot first appeared in "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" (published in 1920) and exited in "Curtain" (published in 1975). Following the latter, Poirot was the only fictional character to receive an obituary on the front page of "The New York Times". By 1930, Agatha Christie found Poirot "insufferable", and, by
Parker Pyne are extravagant). Agatha Christie published a total of 14 short stories featuring Parker Pyne. Of these, the first dozen initially appeared in various US/UK magazines and were later collected into the 1934 anthology "Parker Pyne Investigates". The remaining two tales were originally created as vehicles for her most famous sleuth, Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, but Christie reworked these into Pyne cases before their inclusion in the 1939 short story collection "The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories". Within his work, Pyne himself always disclaimed the role of hard-core detective, and his literary domain was usually relegated to light-hearted short stories rather