The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Agatha Christie cannot be beat for crafting a mystery plot. Her characters may be cardboard, and her settings too, but she creates as complicated and red-herring-filled a story as you will find anywhere.

Having read all of her mysteries years ago and in recent years having watched most of the Poirot TV adaptations with David Suchet, and the various Miss Marple TV adaptations with different (but all excellent) actresses, I decided it was time to go back to the books. Since The Mysterious Affair at Styles was Christie’s first Poirot novel I decided to start there.

It’s a classic locked-room country house mystery, complete with a diagram of the second floor of the house (I love those maps and diagrams) and reproductions of a letter and other writing. It has an all-too-likely suspect whom Poirot seems to be working hard to keep out of jail, a sympathetic man who is arrested seemingly with Poirot’s blessing, and a handful of beverages and medications that might have been the vehicle for the poison used to kill the victim.

This very first Poirot story also introduces Captain Hastings and Inspector Japp, two wonderful characters who provide a perfect foil for the Belgian detective with the oh-so-active little grey cells and the charming manners. Very popular when it was published in 1920, The Mysterious Affair at Styles is classic Christie and a great place to start if you haven’t read her before.

2011 No 49 Coming soon: Requiem in Vienna

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