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
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