The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Hardcover

English language

Published Oct. 29, 2009 by Barnes & Noble.

ISBN:
978-1-4351-1063-2
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4 stars (82 reviews)

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.

Who …

105 editions

Enjoyable but dated

3 stars

Enjoyable and I didn’t fully pick up on all the clues or guess the identity of the culprit (unlike The Mousetrap). The general story of the book has aged well, but some of the dialogue has not - characters make casual racist, sexist and antisemitic remarks, which I don’t think would be the case if this book was written today.

Review of 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Why yes I did recently watch Glass Onion, what makes you ask?

There's not much I can add that hasn't already been said about the debut novel of the most successful commercial author of all time. Though I do remember reading a nonfiction book about the crime fiction genre a while back and how it mentioned that early works in the genre sort of had an upper class/aristocratic bent that tried to solve the central mystery without involving the police, as if to tell the lower classes, "let us handle our own affairs." That kind of happens here as well, but seeing as it was first published in 1920 I shouldn't be surprised. Just something I noticed.

Despite a big cast of named characters, I never felt like I mistook one for another because they all managed to have distinct quirks and behaviors. The pivotal murder occurs, and anyone's …

Always a joy to read Agatha Christie

5 stars

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 'Mysterious Affair at Styles' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

"At present, we are all thinking so much, and saying so little."

My mom and I talk on the phone every week or so about what we're reading, and when she asked me this week what I was reading and I told her I was reading this book, there was a pause on the line and then an "oh.......... that doesn't seem like you." I had to laugh a little, because it really doesn't when you look at my read list. Before this book, I think the only other mystery series I've kept up with was Louise Penny's Armand Gamache books. I've always counted Agatha Christie books as "the books my grandma read" when I was growing up, and I'm ashamed to say I never gave them the time of day. Now that I work at a library though, I've cast my literary net far and wide to scoop up …

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