Agatha Christie her service in September 1918. After the war, Agatha and Archie Christie settled in a flat at 5 Northwick Terrace in St. John's Wood, northwest London. Christie had long been a fan of detective novels, having enjoyed Wilkie Collins's "The Woman in White" and "The Moonstone", as well as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's early Sherlock Holmes stories. She wrote her own detective novel, "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", featuring Hercule Poirot, a former Belgian police officer noted for his twirly large "magnificent moustaches" and egg-shaped head. Poirot had taken refuge in Britain after Germany invaded Belgium. Christie's inspiration for the
Hercule Poirot perhaps, Madame, tell you a little more about myself. I am "Hercule Poirot"." The revelation left Mrs Summerhayes unmoved. "What a lovely name," she said kindly. "Greek, isn't it?" Poirot is less active during the cases that take place at the end of his career. Beginning with "Three Act Tragedy" (1934), Christie had perfected during the inter-war years a subgenre of Poirot novel in which the detective himself spent much of the first third of the novel on the periphery of events. In novels such as "Taken at the Flood", "After the Funeral", and "Hickory Dickory Dock", he is even