Sherlock Holmes versus Hercule Poirot Quiz

Answer: The Mysterious Affair At Styles

When Agatha Christie created her detective, Hercule Poirot, she made no secret of the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective, Sherlock Holmes, was a major influence on her own work.

In her autobiography, Christie says: "At that date, I was well steeped in the Sherlock Holmes tradition so I considered detectives. Not like Sherlock Holmes, of course: I must invent one of my own...I reviewed such detectives as I had met and admired in books. There was Sherlock Holmes, the one and only - I should never be able to emulate him."

Answer: Captain Arthur Hastings

Agatha Christie stated her detective "would also have a friend as a kind of butt or stooge - that would not be too difficult ...Hercule Poirot and his Watson, Captain Hastings. I quite enjoyed Captain Hastings. He was a stereotyped creation, but he and Poirot represented my idea of a detective team".

Just as Watson chronicled most (but not all) of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, so too did Hastings chronicle some of Hercule Poirot's cases.

Answer: Inspector Japp

In her autobiography, Christie stated "I was still writing in the Sherlock Holmes tradition - eccentric detective, stooge assistant with a Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp."

Answer: Achille

Whether Achille Poirot was a real person or an invention of Hercule Poirot's is not clear.

Achille is first mentioned by Hercule in "The Big Four". Hastings says "Your brother? I never knew you had a brother." To which Poirot replies "You surprise me Hastings. Do you not know that all celebrated detectives have brothers who would be even more celebrated than they are, were it not for constitutional indolence?" (clearly a reference to Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes).

However, further on in the story, Poirot tells Hastings that "Achille" was really Hercule in disguise. "Brother Achille has gone home again - to the land of myths. It was I all the time."

And in "The Labours of Hercules", Dr Burton asks Poirot "You had a brother called Achille, did you not?" and Poirot replies "Only for a short space of time".

Answer: Irene Adler

The opening lines of "A Scandal in Bohemia" explain Holmes' relationship with Irene Adler: "To Sherlock Holmes she is always 'The Woman'. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex". For both Holmes and Poirot, these attachments do not go anywhere and the two ladies do not feature in more than one or two stories.

Answer: Curtain

Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls but was forced to resurrect him due to an outcry from his reading public. Christie would have liked to kill off Poirot but acknowledged that "Poirot is rather insufferable. Most public men are who have lived too long. But none of them like retiring. So I am afraid Poirot won't either - certainly not while he is my chief source of income."

When Agatha Christie wrote "Curtain" she intended it to be published after her death. However, it was published in 1975, the year before she died.

Answer: the cultivation of vegetable marrows

Don't those two occupations seem incongruous, given the personalities of the two detectives? This is especially true in the case of Hercule Poirot, who is so meticulous in his personal hygiene, who frets over a speck of lint on his clothes and grooms his moustache to perfection. Can you really see him getting dirty, digging in a garden and putting fertilizer on his marrows?

Answer: intellectual evaluation of the evidence ("the little grey cells")

Hercule Poirot believed primarily in order and method and use of one's brain. Poirot claimed that anyone can solve a crime by simply thinking about it. He shunned physical evidence on the grounds that, taken by themselves, such clues could never lead to the solution of a crime. "...the true work, it is always done from within. The little grey cells, remember always the little grey cells, mon ami".

Sherlock Holmes was the detective who relied on physical evidence, such as footprints and cigar ash. Miss Marple's methods were psychological - she typically recognised criminals because of a "village parallel".

Answer: Professor James Moriarty

In "The Final Problem", it is Moriarty with whom Holmes struggles before he falls to his apparent death at Reichenbach Falls. Holmes refers to Moriarty as "one of the great brains of the century", a "Napoleon of crime" and "the most dangerous man in London".

Answer: Joseph Bell

Dr Joseph Bell was one of Arthur Conan Doyle's professors at the University of Edinburgh when Doyle was undertaking his medical studies. Bell used his powers of observation of small details to make shrewd deductions about his patients.

Hercule Poirot was not based on a real person although Agatha Christie acknowledges that she decided to make him Belgian because "we had quite a colony of Belgian refugees living in the parish...Why not make my detective a Belgian? I thought".