Arthur Hastings of the short stories featuring Poirot, but appears in only eight of the novels, seven of which were written before 1940: Hastings is also the narrator of all stories in "Poirot Investigates" (1924), a collection of short stories. Hastings is also present in Christie's play "Black Coffee" (1930) and its novelisation alongside Poirot. 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
Hercule Poirot the Poirot stories also appeared, most recently twenty-seven of them on BBC Radio 4 (and regularly repeated on BBC 7, later BBC Radio 4 Extra), starring John Moffatt; Maurice Denham and Peter Sallis have also played Poirot on BBC Radio 4 in "The Mystery of the Blue Train" and in "Hercule Poirot's Christmas", respectively. In 1939, Orson Welles and the Mercury Players dramatised "Roger Ackroyd" on CBS's "Campbell Playhouse". A 1945 radio series of at least 13 original half-hour episodes (none of which apparently adapt any Christie stories) transferred Poirot from London to New York and starred character actor Harold