(e)Book – The Mysterious affair at Styles

 (e)Book –  The Mysterious affair at Styles

(= Hercule Poirot #1)

Author: Agatha Christie 

Score: 7/10
Year: 1920 (original) ;  2012(this edition) 

Publisher:  Duke Classics 

ISBN 9781620122921/ 978-1-62012-292-1

Pages 240

Narrated by Hastings, recently invalided out of active service, is granted a month's sick leave. He stumbles upon John Cavendish, whom he barely knew and hadn't seen for some years. After talking about their old times, Hastings accepts John's offer to visit Styles Court - Cavendish's mother's place, where Hastings had already spent some time when he was a boy. 

There, among the rest of the household, Hastings is a witness to Mrs. Inglethorpe's death, and calls his old friend, Hercule Poirot, ex-police inspector turned detective, to help solve the mystery and find who, how and why Mrs. Inglethorpe was murdered... 

Agatha Christie's first Poirot novel places the famous Belgian detective in his older days; she introduces him as finicky and eccentric, with intelligence and deductive skills much like Sherlock Holmes, but also very different than Doyle's hero : Poirot has more emotional display, but not in public, and not in front of the investigated party. 

Hastings is very much like Dr Watson, being the narrator, and is also, at the start of these novels, on leave from the army. He is about 30 in this novel, notices and recounts women's beauty much like Dr Watson, but isn't a doctor. He is less verbose and less poetic in his storytelling - though the novel is longer than Doyle's stories involving his own detective. 

Christie directs you to suspect each person, as Hastings recounts the various motives and possible ways each would have had, before unraveling the puzzle with the revelation of the true guilty party, motives, and Poirot's explanations as to how he achieved the last links he needed to piece the puzzle together himself. 

Aside from the narrator Hastings and how he views Poirot, we never get to know much about the characters met during this investigation ; Christie's style is very fluid and fast paced. It's by no means literary detective novel, but overall pleasant enough to read and see how the pieces come together. 

Of note, there are a few cringey racist issues in this novel, though apparently not as badly as some of Christie's other novels. 

After this first book,  Poirot would appear in many more books, most by Christie but 4 others were written by Sophie Hannah in 2014-2020. 

Wiki lists the books, their publication order as well as re-ordering to Poirot's career in chronological order, so you can decide on which order to read.

Between 1989 and 2013, a British Crime Drama adaptation of these stories were aired, comprising 70 episodes in 13 seasons, starring David Suchet as Hercule Poirot. I have seen only a few episodes a few years ago, and since I only read this book now, I cannot attest to fidelity nor quality, except to tell that it was entertaining and that I plan to watch more of it when I can. 

This other wiki lists adaptations for the Styles mystery.