The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a detective novel by British writer Agatha Christie. It was written in the middle of the First World War, in 1916, and first published by John Lane in the United States in October 1920 and in the United Kingdom by The Bodley Head (John Lane's UK company) on 21 January 1921.Styles was Christie's first published novel. It introduced Hercule Poirot, Inspector (later, Chief Inspector) Japp, and Arthur Hastings. Poirot, a Belgian refugee of the Great War, is settling in England near the home of Emily Inglethorp, who helped him to his new life. His friend Hastings arrives as a guest at her home. When the woman is killed, Poirot uses his detective skills to solve the mystery.
The book includes maps of the house, the murder scene, and a drawing of a fragment of a will. The true first publication of the novel was …
The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a detective novel by British writer Agatha Christie. It was written in the middle of the First World War, in 1916, and first published by John Lane in the United States in October 1920 and in the United Kingdom by The Bodley Head (John Lane's UK company) on 21 January 1921.Styles was Christie's first published novel. It introduced Hercule Poirot, Inspector (later, Chief Inspector) Japp, and Arthur Hastings. Poirot, a Belgian refugee of the Great War, is settling in England near the home of Emily Inglethorp, who helped him to his new life. His friend Hastings arrives as a guest at her home. When the woman is killed, Poirot uses his detective skills to solve the mystery.
The book includes maps of the house, the murder scene, and a drawing of a fragment of a will. The true first publication of the novel was as a weekly serial in The Times, including the maps of the house and other illustrations included in the book. This novel was one of the first ten books published by Penguin Books when it began in 1935.
This first mystery novel by Agatha Christie was well received by reviewers in the UK and the US at initial publication. An analysis in 1990 was positive about the plot, considered the novel one of the few by Christie that is well-anchored in time and place, a story that knows it describes the end of an era, and mentions that the plot is clever. Christie had not mastered cleverness throughout her first novel, as "too many clues tend to cancel each other out"; this was judged a difficulty "which Conan Doyle never satisfactorily overcame, but which Christie would."
I had read this one before but it had been a while so I decided to try again—especially because a couple of friends reading Agatha Christie reminded me of how much I used to love her books. It was as thrilling as it was the first time. I had my suspicions, but in the end, I feel just like Hastings—an utter fool. I picked up quite a few of the clues and came to the right conclusions but in the end, had not properly sorted all the clues in my little grey cells. Eager to re-read all her works now!
Review of 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Agatha Christie's first book. For that it was very enjoyable. According to Wikipedia she wrote it as part of a challenge to write a book the reader could not spot the perp in. Turns out she did that by making it so obvious that noone ever thought this character could really have done it, and then adding multiple levels of other things that complicate matters. The book does suffer a bit in other areas: characterization is flat for most of the characters. Sometimes I found it hard to follow who actually was saying what to whom at any given point, despite not usually having this problem. And in the end Poirot and the narrator painstakingly put together the plot in form of a Socratic dialogue stretching over pages and pages while obviously all the other characters in the scene are just sitting there twiddling thumbs. All in all not a …
Agatha Christie's first book. For that it was very enjoyable. According to Wikipedia she wrote it as part of a challenge to write a book the reader could not spot the perp in. Turns out she did that by making it so obvious that noone ever thought this character could really have done it, and then adding multiple levels of other things that complicate matters. The book does suffer a bit in other areas: characterization is flat for most of the characters. Sometimes I found it hard to follow who actually was saying what to whom at any given point, despite not usually having this problem. And in the end Poirot and the narrator painstakingly put together the plot in form of a Socratic dialogue stretching over pages and pages while obviously all the other characters in the scene are just sitting there twiddling thumbs. All in all not a bad read, but justly overshadowed by her later mysteries.
