a Belgian detective who appears as a character in many of the mystery novels by Agatha Christie . He has a very neat appearance and a neat pointed moustache. He often considers English people strange and English people in the books are amused by his accent. He is extremely clever and uses his intelligence, or what he calls his ‘little grey cells’, to solve every crime. Many of the stories were adapted for a popular British television series called Poirot in the 1980s and 1990s.
See also detective story .