Hercule Poirot available to solve mysteries at an English country house. At the time of Christie's writing, it was considered patriotic to express sympathy towards the Belgians, since the invasion of their country had constituted Britain's "casus belli" for entering World War I, and British wartime propaganda emphasised the "Rape of Belgium". Poirot first appeared in "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" (published in 1920) and exited in "Curtain" (published in 1975). Following the latter, Poirot was the only fictional character to receive an obituary on the front page of "The New York Times". By 1930, Agatha Christie found Poirot "insufferable", and, by
Agatha Christie's Poirot of the final episode, only slightly short of the target he had set himself (in a 2007 interview) of completing the entire canon before his 65th birthday. The short stories and novellas "The Submarine Plans", "The Market Basing Mystery", "Christmas Adventure," "The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest," "The Second Gong," "The Incident of the Dog's Ball," and "Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly" were not filmed in their original short story format, as Agatha Christie later rewrote these stories as novellas or novels ("The Incredible Theft", "Murder in the Mews", "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding", "The Mystery of the