Mysterious Affair at Styles Illustrated

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Agatha Christie: Mysterious Affair at Styles Illustrated (2019, Independently Published)

224 pages

English language

Published Aug. 6, 2019 by Independently Published.

ISBN:
978-1-6981-4769-7
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3 stars (1 review)

Set in the summer of 1917 in an Essex country estate, the story follows the war-wounded Captain Arthur Hastings to the Styles St. Mary manor of his friend John Cavendish. The Cavendish household is wrought with tension due to the marriage of John's widowed old aunt Emily, she of a sizeable fortune, to a suspicious younger man, Alfred Inglethorp, twenty years her junior. Emily's two stepsons, John and Lawrence Cavendish, as well as John's wife Mary and several other people, also live at Styles. Late one night, the residents of Styles wake to find Emily Inglethorp dying. When Emily's sudden heart attack is found to be attributable to strychnine, Hastings, who had runs into his old friend, the Belgian Hercule Poirot, he recruits him to aid in the local investigation. With impeccable timing, Hercule Poirot, the insightful retired detective, makes his dramatic entrance to solve a most baffling case.

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Review of 'The mysterious affair at Styles' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Written more than 100 years ago, this was a pretty quick read. Apparently written on a bet, that Agatha Christie couldn't write a detective novel in which the reader couldn’t deduce the criminal. I was surprised, but I'm no mystery junkie :)

This is the first Hercule Poirot novel as well, following a short story written a few years earlier. Have read many reviews that say this is not the best introduction to the little Belgian - better to go back and read this later as a "prequel".

It is also in the public domain, available on project Gutenberg and better, standardebooks.org/ebooks/agatha-christie/the-mysterious-affair-at-styles which edits and cleans up Gutenberg titles. I liked it.