Hercule Poirot: Christie's super sleuth

Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot

My first encounter with Hercule Poirot was on the Orient Express. I read Murder on the Orient Express with rapt attention and fell in love with the dapper Belgian detective with an egg-shaped head, a waxed moustache and a passion for neatness. I found his demand for order (i.e., books arranged on a shelf according to height) and love for symmetry, quite endearing.
However, my first introduction to Agatha Christie, at the age of fifteen, was not a Hercule Poirot book. Rather, it was my brother's tattered copy of A Pocket full of Rye, starring Miss Marple, another famous creation by Agatha Christie.
Having grown out of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers series and The Five Find-Outers and Dog, I was looking for something more intricate. A Pocket full of Rye gave me just that and since then there has been no turning back. I hunted down every Agatha Christie book I could find on the dusty shelves at my school's library and devoured them in large mouthfuls.
Hercule Poirot, the most celebrated detective since Sherlock Holmes, was created in 1916 (when Agatha Christie penned the first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles). The Belgian detective appeared in 33 novels and 65 short stories and is the only fictitious character to be honoured with a front page obituary of The New York Times.
Recently, I stumbled over a copy of Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories, in the bookworms' paradise, Nilkhet. Gripped by a wave of nostalgia, I pounced upon it. Since then it has found a comfortable place on my bedside table and satiates my urge to read a few pages until the sandman arrives.
As I read the stories I found myself remembering the queer habits of the egoistic detective. Poirot despised dusty, unclean houses and favoured the indoors (especially central heating in the merciless English winter). His long-suffering friend Captain Hastings frequently received gibes from the detective for casting the newspaper on the floor instead of folding it symmetrically.
He ridiculed methods as examining footprints, collecting cigarette ash, searching for clues with a magnifying glass, or taking fingerprints. According to him, any crime could be solved with simply placing the puzzle pieces correctly.
Poirot was an armchair detective-- he had to simply "sit still in an armchair and use the little grey cells".
Of course, Poirot's moustache is as famous as his "little grey cells". He took a lot of pride in his luxuriant moustache and was always meticulously dressed down to his patent leather shoes.
"My little friend, neat as ever, his egg-shaped head tilted on one side, was delicately applying a new pomade to his moustache. A certain harmless vanity was a characteristic which fell into line with his general love of order and method," observed Hastings in The Affair at the Victory Ball.
Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories has 51 short stories presented in chronological order in a single volume - plus a bonus story not seen for more than 70 years. Arranged in their original publication order, these short stories provide a feast for hardened Agatha Christie addicts. It also includes Poirot and the Regatta Mystery, an early version of an Agatha Christie story not published since 1936.
The size of the stories does not mean there is any lack of detail. Each story has a novel plot that comes with a twist in the end. In true Christie style, there are numerous details that appear to be insignificant, but all is pieced together in a grand revelation by Poirot in the end.

Afsana Tazreen is sub-editor, The Daily Star.