Captain Arthur J. M. Hastings, OBE, is a fictional character created by Agatha Christie as the companion-chronicler and best friend of the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. He is first introduced in Christie's 1920 novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles (originally written in 1916) and appears as a character in seven other Poirot novels, including the final one Curtain: Poirot's Last Case (1975), along with a play and many short stories. He is also the narrator of several of them.
Biography
The reader is able to pinpoint Hastings's approximate birthdate as 1886 from the first chapter of The Mysterious Affair at Styles (set in 1916), as he mentions that John Cavendish was 'a good fifteen years [his] senior' though hardly looking 'his forty-five years'. He was educated at Eton.
Prior to his service in World War I, Hastings was employed at Lloyd's of London. at Styles Court, Essex, in the first of Christie's novels. Hastings was a Captain.
Hastings married Dulcie Duveen sometime after the events of 1923's The Murder on the Links. The couple moved to Argentina, where they ranched. They had several children, two sons and two daughters.
By the events of Curtain, Hastings has been widowed. and by Simon Williams in Lord Edgware Dies (1992), The ABC Murders (2000), Peril at End House (2000), The Mysterious Affair at Styles (2005), and Dumb Witness (2006).
Himesh Patel voiced Hastings in Audible's adaptation of The Mysterious Affair at Styles and The ABC Murders.
The Hastings novels
Hastings narrates the majority of the short stories featuring Poirot, but appears in only eight of the novels, seven of which were written before 1940:
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1916 but published in 1920)
- The Murder on the Links (1923)
- The Big Four (1927)
- Peril at End House (1932)
- Lord Edgware Dies (1933) – published in the U.S. as Thirteen at Dinner
- The A.B.C. Murders (1936)
- Dumb Witness (1937) – published in the U.S. as Poirot Loses a Client
- Curtain: Poirot's Last Case (written in the early 1940s, published in 1975)
Hastings is the narrator of all stories in Poirot Investigates (1924), a collection of short stories. Hastings is also present in Christie's play Black Coffee (1930) and its novelisation alongside Poirot.
See also
- Ariadne Oliver