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
The Regatta Mystery short story." An unnamed reviewer in the "Toronto Daily Star" (30 June 1939) wrote, regarding the title story "The Regatta Mystery", that "Agatha Christie succeeds in baffling her readers ... [B]ut far from plausible is her solution", and went on generally to say, "The author is handicapped by attempting to compress her plots into 27-odd pages each. Nor has she opportunity for continued suspense." The original version of "The Regatta Mystery" featured Hercule Poirot. The story was later rewritten by Christie to change the detective from Poirot to Parker Pyne for book publication and all collections in both the US