Frank Howell Evans wrote the Jules Poiret Mystery series in the early 1900s. Jules Poiret, a famous detective together with Captain Haven solve murders. According to Wikipedia, Jules Poiret was inspired by Sherlock Holmes and in turn inspired Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot. Created in 1909 by writer Frank Howel Evans, Jules Poiret is one of the grandfathers of the British detective genre. BBC researcher Margaret Osoba has, in the year that Sophie Hannah writes the first new Hercule Poirot book in 39 years, come up with the theory that Agatha Christie stole her famous character from the turn of the century thriller writer, Frank Howel Evans. In 1909 when Agatha was 19 and had already begun to write, Evans published a story about a heavyset detective named Jules Poiret with much of Hercule Poirot's mannerisms and speech patterns. Researcher Margaret Osoba argues that Agatha Christie got her idea for Hercule Poirot from Frank Howel Evans' Jules Poiret stories (New Magazine, 1909-10) and the title for her play Mouse Trap from his book Murder Trap .
