William Morrow‘Murder on the Orient Express: A Hercule Poirot Mystery” Agatha Christie’s first mystery, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles,” was rejected by six publishers before finally being published by John Lane in 1920. In it she introduced Hercule Poirot, today the most famous private detective since Sherlock Holmes. By the time of Christie’s death in 1976 at age 85, she herself had become the most popular fiction writer in the world, and “Murder on the Orient Express” her most popular book.