|
| Mysterious Affair at Styles: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Agatha Christie Collection) | 
| Author: Agatha Christie
Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers
Category: Book
List Price: $12.00
Buy New: $1.00
You Save: $11.00 (92%)
New (34) Collectible (1) from $1.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  61 reviews
Sales Rank: 161728
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 1
ISBN: 1579126227
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9781579126223
ASIN: 1579126227
Publication Date: September 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Customer Reviews:
 A must read for true mystery fans September 19, 2008
Actually, this isn't Agatha Christy's best, but I give it a five star rating for its importance as her first mystery and the first Hercule Poirot story. All others came from this one and it is a first rate puzzler. Those already familiar with Agatha Christy will have it partially figured out if mot completely long before the end, but this shows the influence she had on the development of the mystery genre. She plays a game with the reader and she plays it fair and square. While doing so, she creates one of fiction's most memorably eccentric characters, Hercule Poirot. He is such an enjoyable character that the book is captivating observing him although the suspects in this one aren't particularly likeable. This is a pure puzzle and doesn't have the sense of tragedy that some of her later books have. It's a fast read and definitely an enjoyable one.
 "...the colossal cheek of the little man!" August 18, 2008
...I got a hunch about 1/2 way through that one of the characters was the murderer - but could not even begin to see how they did it or were connected. My first read of a Christie book - and I'll be digging in to others since I enjoyed this one so much.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie June 10, 2008
The Mysterious Affair at Styles: A Hercule Poirot by Agatha Christie
Great eBook for Kindle!
 Somewhat Clunky Beginning for the Belgian Sleuth May 7, 2008
The first "grownup" novels I recall reading were those of Agatha Christie and P.G. Wodehouse, and while I periodically return to Wodehouse with great enjoyment, I haven't revisited the Christie books until now. I figured this, her first published work (written in 1916, published in 1920), would be a good starting place. As well as being her first work, it introduces my favorite of her recurring characters, the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.
To my surprise, the story takes place during WWI (not after, as many suppose), a detail that plays a minor role in the story. The story is told by Poirot's occasional sidekick (he only appear in eight of the Poirot novels) Captain Hastings, who has been invalided home for the duration of the war. The specifics of his injury aren't explained, but he has gone to the Essex countryside to spend some time at a friend's family mansion (the Styles of the title). Things there prove to be rather tense, as the elderly matriarch has married a much younger man, whom everyone suspects of being a golddigger. Meanwhile, Hastings' friend and his brother are in tenuous financial circumstances due to the provisions of their dead father's will. Of course, the old lady ends up dead, and there are plenty of suspects to go around.
Fortuitously, Hastings runs into Poirot in the local village, where Poirot and some fellow Belgians are living as refugees from the war. The two had apparently met years before, and soon Hastings has enlisted him to investigate the old woman's death. Found dead in her locked room, she appears to have been poisoned, but by whom and how is a mystery. Clues abound (as do plenty of red herrings) in the somewhat complicated story, which finds Poirot already in full form. Alas, he is the only fully developed and lively character to be found, with Hastings already his usual naive sappy self, and none of the rest of cast particularly memorable. As a story, it's somewhat clunky, although all the elements that made Poirot such a popular character are there in abundance (except his mustache mania). Not a great read, but not a bad one either.
And Introducing Monsieur Hercule Poirot January 12, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
"The Mysterious Affair At Styles" was Agatha Christie's first mystery novel, in which she introduced her enigmatic and eccentric Belgium detective, Hercule Poirot. She often later lamented that she should have made Poirot younger to begin with as he was to be the star detective in many of her mysteries afterward. But her retired police officer began his magnificent orbit with this intriguing mystery full of the twists and turns that would soon become Christie's trademark.
Wounded at the Western front, Captain Hastings is invalided home and has a chance encounter with his old friend John Cavendish. John invites him to his family's estate for a visit, which Hastings gladly accepts. But Styles, the family's home, is hardly full of happy characters. Both sons are disturbed by their stepmother's behavior - for she has married Alfred Inglethorp, a man twenty years younger than she. Almost everyone is convinced that he is solely after her money and when Mrs. Inglethorp dies suddenly one night of strychnine poisoning, her husband is the immediate suspect. But there are others within the household who would have benefitted from the old lady's death, especially when a fragment of a freshly written will is found burned in her bedchamber. Could someone within her own family have cleverly carried out her murder? Only Hercule Poirot can find all the missing pieces to solve this puzzler of a crime.
Agatha Christie's name is forever cemented in the echelons of mystery writers, and with good reason. Her varied background helped to make her a near expert in matters of poisons, which have played an important role in many of her novels, and her travels to exotic locales have created heightened settings for some of her best mysteries. Her first novel must certainly have been a tough act to follow with its quick pace and plot twists; it fails only at times through its slightly weak narration by Captain Hastings. "The Mysterious Affair At Styles" introduced the world to Agatha Christie, and readers have never looked for better, returning time and again to each mystery she ingeniously crafted.
|
|
|
Wildlife, nature and the Environment
Sponsored Links
Learn how to get your own Amazon Book shop | |
