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The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Page history last edited by Jon 12 years, 1 month ago

Christie, Agatha - The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

 

 

Review by Nick Fuller

4/5

Christie's first, and an auspicious beginning, despite the old-fashioned approach (written in 1917, five years before The Secret Adversary and six before the next Poirot, The Murder on the Links). The style is particularly dated, abounding in floridly Edwardian excesses and melodramatic exclamations, which also feature rather too prominently in the plot - the Mary Cavendish and Dr. Bauerstein sub-plots rather obscure the central business: the poisoning by strychnine of Mrs. Inglethorp by one of her dependents (who contribute to the War by holding fetes, bazaars and speeches - the two women work, while the young men, rather than doing their bit for King and Country, pursue their love affairs), and solved by Poirot. The little Belgian is more of a comic foreigner monstrosity than he would be by 1926 (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd), but does some excellent detection, mainly reasoning from physical clues (e.g., the fire). Like Hanaud and Holmes, he has the egregious habit of keeping too much too himself; we should have been told about the taste of the coffee and the mud in the boudoir. Rather than having the opportunity of working things out for himself, the reader must perforce be content to marvel and admire. (It is also difficult to credit that a man who continually stoops to keyholes in later tales would not rifle through the papers in the despatch-case: his failure to do so is too obviously a convenient plot device.) The solution he discovers, however, triumphantly jutsifies his behaviour. The murderer is one we suspected all along but were misdirected into dismissing; the method is both ingenious and eminently practical; and there is a sound use of the law. All things considered, an excellent début.

 


THe Mysterious Affair at Styles is available for download from Project Gutenberg.

 

See also http://www.classicmysteries.net/2012/02/the-mysterious-affair-at-styles.html

 

Comments (1)

Jon said

at 8:40 am on Jan 27, 2010

Blurb: This novel was originally written as the result of a bet, that the author, who had previously never written a book could not compose a detective novel in which the reader would not be able to “spot” the murderer, though having access to the same clues as the detective. The author has certainly won her bet, and in addition to a most ingenious plot of the best detective type she has introduced a new type of detective in the shape of a Belgian. This novel has had the unique distinction for a first book of being accepted by the Times as a serial for the weekly edition.

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