The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie - Paperback

The book misses a diagram from the original book in the chapter the night of tragedy. I had it print out and paste it in the last of the previous chapter. Its sad to see such inconvenient reproduction of a literary work

Having read just about every Christie book, I went back to early Christie. This is POIROT being introduced; ideas came to Christie when she worked as a VAD in the First World War, involved with a pharmacy,and becoming familiar with poisons; someone challenged her to try her hand at writing a detective story and this is the result in 1920. Poirot has his character cleverly worked out in this book and the fact that it's based on Belgian soldiers Christie met during the war, means it's based on real people. This is a good read, and the author's manipulative skills are already blossoming. I recommend it for its crafty misleading narrative, and the completeness of her denouement. A good read.

We’re all familiar with Agatha Christie’s little Belgian detective. His facial hair is recognisable to most, either from watching the many films or television adaptations, listening to radio plays or even reading the novels. The Mysterious Affair at Styles was Christie’s first published novel and where we meet Hercule Poirot.I’m not new to the adventures of M. Poirot. My favourite adventures of his are Murder on the Orient Express and The ABC Murders. My mum is an avid Christie fan and I have been surrounded by such literature most of my life. How I had neglected to read this novel is puzzling. Nevertheless, I’m glad to have read this adventure.The main focus of every story in the series is a murder. In this case it is Emily Inglethorp who is poisoned by someone at the estate of Styles. Is it her oddball husband who is disliked by the rest of the household, the doctor-turned poet stepson who stands to inherit a substantial amount of money, a toxicologist who is a friend of a lady of the house? The book is very good at keeping you guessing, throwing in a twist or new piece of information every few pages.Captain Hastings narrates the story well, adding to the confusion by putting forward his own interpretations of situations. The characters are well described and developed and Christie has a knack for persuading you to feel certain ways about certain people, adding to the twists and turns of the plot.I enjoyed this novel, not only as an instalment of one of my favourite crime franchises but as wonderful story in its own right. Anyone into crime and mystery needs to indulge in Poirot’s first adventure and relish the challenge and plot this novel presents.

This feels like someone printed it using their computer printer or photocopier. Genuinely the worst quality book I’ve ever bought in my life. The front cover is an awful pixelated image, the quality of the printing is terrible, the pages feel weird, the font and page layout is bizarre, and the book itself is a strange size, like an A5 notebook.If you’ve ever seen Peep Show, this is like when Mark gets ripped off by that dodgy publisher that makes awful versions of his book.

One of the better Agatha Christie books, now 100 years old. I think the writing could be edited to make it more grammatically correct. There are a few times where the sentence structure could be improved with better proof-reading. However, it does not affect the overall story.