Agatha Christie Before marrying and starting a family in London, she had served in a Devon hospital during the First World War, tending to troops coming back from the trenches. She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six consecutive rejections, but this changed when "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", featuring Hercule Poirot, was published in 1920. During the Second World War, she worked as a pharmacy assistant at University College Hospital, London, acquiring a good knowledge of poisons which feature in many of her novels. "Guinness World Records" lists Christie as the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly
Recurring characters in the Hercule Poirot stories and showing unwavering loyalty towards Poirot. When forced to choose between Poirot and his wife in that novel, he chose Poirot. The two were an airtight team until Hastings met and married Dulcie Duveen, a beautiful music hall performer he met in "The Murder on the Links". They later emigrated to Argentina, leaving Poirot behind a "very unhappy old man". A mystery writer who is loosely based on Agatha Christie herself. Poirot's secretary, Miss Lemon, has few human weaknesses. The only two mistakes she is ever recorded making are a typing error in "Hickory Dickory Dock" and the mismailing of