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 detective in four of Christie's books; he was introduced in "The Man in the Brown Suit", published in 1924. He featured as Hercule Poirot's good friend in "Cards on the Table" (1936) and "Death on the Nile" (1937}. He also appears in "Sparkling Cyanide" (1945), and like his first appearance, Poirot is not a character in the novel. He is known for his patience, composure, and ability to detect facts quickly without anyone else noticing. Although rather conventional in his deductive thought processes, he has an exceptionally open mind regarding possibilities and theories, and while he is amazed by some