This book introduces Christie's most famous detective: Hercule Poirot. Poirot, who in his home country of Belgium had been a famous police detective, is a refugee from World War I (which will be known as The Great War until the second one starts). The benefactress of Belgian refugees is found dead from strychnine poisoning early one morning, and Colonel Hastings, a friend of her family and an old acquaintance of Poirot's, asks Poirot to find the murderer. A rather simple plot (as is usual from Christie) and only one murder (which is not usual) starts the English career of Poirot and his sidekick Hastings. Poirot and Hastings will return to Styles for his last case in the novel Curtain.