Hercule Poirot

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Image:David Suchet is Hercule Poirot.jpg

Hercule Poirot (pronounced Template:IPA) is a fictional character, the primary detective of Agatha Christie's novels. He appears in over 30 novels and over 50 short stories and is one of her most famous characters.

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Biography

The character was born in Spa, Belgium, and has worked as a Belgian police officer, notably in Brussels, but moved to England. For the most part he is thought to have moved to England during the First World War and started a second career as a private detective. Poirot is remarkable for his small stature and egg-shaped head, his cat-like green eyes, his meticulous moustache, his dandified dressing habits, his absolute obsession with order and neatness, and his disdain for detective methods that include crawling on hands and knees and looking for clues. He prefers to examine the psychology of a crime to discover more evidence, once even betting his friend and Scotland Yard's Chief Inspector, Chief Inspector Japp, that he could solve a case simply by sitting in an easy chair and using his "little grey cells." Although he is Belgian he is most often thought to be French by other characters in Agatha Christie's books.

Like many detectives of the early days of mystery fiction (including Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, and Father Brown), Poirot is unmarried. The love of his life, Countess Vera Rossakoff, appears in the short stories "The Double Clue" and "The Capture of Cerberus" and the novel The Big Four.

His address (from his business card) is 56B Whitehaven Mansions, Sandhurst Square, London W1. The building used in the series can be found on Charterhouse Square - City of London.

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Major novels

The Poirot books take readers through the whole of his life in England, from the first book (The Mysterious Affair at Styles), where he is a refugee staying at Styles, to the last Poirot book (Curtain), where he visits Styles once again before his death. In between, Poirot solves cases outside England as well, including his most famous case, Murder on the Orient Express (1934).

Hercule Poirot became famous with the publication, in 1926, of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, whose surprising solution proved controversial. The novel is still among the most famous of all detective novels: Edmund Wilson alludes to it in the title of his well-known attack on detective fiction, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" Aside from Roger Ackroyd, the most critically-acclaimed Poirot novels appeared from 1932 to 1942, including such acknowledged classics as Murder on the Orient Express, The ABC Murders (1935), Cards on the Table (1936), and Death on the Nile (1937). The last of these, a tale of multiple homicide upon a Nile steamer, was judged by the celebrated detective novelist John Dickson Carr to be among the ten greatest mystery novels of all time.

The 1942 novel Five Little Pigs (aka Murder in Retrospect), in which Poirot investigates a murder committed sixteen years before by analyzing various accounts of the tragedy, is a Rashomon-like performance that critic and mystery novelist Robert Barnard called the best of the Christie novels.

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Recurring characters

While the majority of the supporting cast in the Poirot stories is always different, some characters do show up more often. Arthur Hastings, whom Poirot met almost immediately after arriving in England, becomes his life-long partner and appears in many of the novels and stories. Other frequently recurring characters include the detective novelist Ariadne Oliver, Agatha Christie's humorous self-caricature, and Poirot's secretary, Miss Lemon. Chief Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard appears in many of the stories, as well. The mysterious Russian Countess Vera Rossakoff, Poirot's only known love interest, appears in three stories.

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Confusion

Although the majority of the Hercule Poirot novels are set between the wars, the latter novels set them in the 1960s (which is contemporary with the time Agatha Christie was writing). However, the many TV and movie adaptations do not show this. Many people believe that Poirot retired from Police work at around 50, but this is untrue, because as shown in the short story The Chocolate Box, he retired at around 30. This can explain why Poirot is around for so long.

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Books featuring Hercule Poirot

Short story collections listed as "ss"

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Hercule Poirot on screen and stage

Image:Ustinov is Poirot.jpg Template:Sect-stub For more information about the ongoing UK television series starring David Suchet, see Agatha Christie's Poirot.

Hercule Poirot has been played by several actors. The character first appeared onscreen in 1931, played by Austin Trevor. Perhaps the most notable portrayals have been by Albert Finney in the cinematic version of Murder on the Orient Express, and David Suchet in a long series of television productions. David Suchet has produced many Hercule Poirot films and three new ones were shown in the UK on 19, 26 March and 2 April 2006, namely: Cards on the Table, After the Funeral and Taken At The Flood. The role has also been played more than once by Peter Ustinov and by Tony Randall, Ian Holm, and Alfred Molina.

Christie, who visited the set of Murder on the Orient Express, approved of Finney's portrayal of her character. Others were less sanguine about Ustinov's portrayal, given that Poirot, written as short, slim, and with coal-black hair, bore little resemblance to the tall, heavy, grey-haired Ustinov. When one of Christie's relatives observed to Ustinov that Poirot did not look like him, Ustinov quipped that "He does now!"

In 2004, NHK (a Japanese TV network) produced a 39 episode anime series titled Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple (Agatha Christie no Meitantei: Poirot to Marple), as well as a manga series by the same title released starting in 2005. The series, adapting several of the best-known Poirot and Marple stories, ran from July 4, 2004 through May 15, 2005, and is now being shown as reruns on NHK and other networks in Japan. Poirot was voiced by Kōtarō Satomi (Satomi Kōtarō) and Miss Marple was voiced by Kaoru Yachigusa (Yachigusa Kaoru).

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Theatrical films featuring Hercule Poirot

For more films based on Agatha Christie books, see the corresponding category.

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