Coffee cups and candle grease... (The secret to Christie's success?) (The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie)

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Product:	The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie
Date:	19/05/01 (124 review reads)
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Advantages: Great Storyline, Great Author, Great Characters

Disadvantages: None!

I’ve always been a fan of detective/mystery books – whether it be a Dorothy L. Sayers or a Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), however, nothing beats settling down with a box of chocolates and a good old Agatha Christie book!

**The Author.

Before I start on the story, I thought I’d better tell you a little about Dame Agatha Christie herself.
She was born in Torquay in 1890, and throughout her life wrote seventy-nine crime novels and nineteen plays. She also wrote six novels under the name of “Mary Westmacott” and two more using the name “Agatha Christie Mallowan” (which she became after she married the famous archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan). A lot of Christie’s books have been dramatised, and not so surprisingly, her novels have been translated into forty-four languages and she has only been outsold by William Shakespeare, and “The Holy Bible”.

In her novels, Christie uses two detectives, Miss Marple, and Hercule Poirot, described by Christie as “an extraordinary looking man, hardly more than five feet four inches, but carried himself with great dignity”, and even from this small description, Christie gives great detail of his personality. Poirot is Belgian, and fits the bill of a detective very well.

**The Story.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a very intriguing little book. The novel was Christie’s first ever published (in 1920 by Bodley Head LTD) therefore a great introduction to the author, and Poirot himself.

The book is written in “first person style” (using ‘I’ instead of ‘He’ or ‘She’) and is written as though a man called Captain Hastings is the author.

The basic storyline of the book is that Hastings, a man of thirty years, decided to stay with his good friend John Cavendish, after being given a month’s sick leave from the army. Hastings goes to Sty
les, which is the home of Cavendish’s stepmother’s home in Essex, where he spent many of his childhood holidays.

As you could imagine with a murder mystery, there is indeed a murder, of Mary Inglethorpe, who is Cavendish’s stepmother. Hastings arrives a couple of days before the murder, two years after Mrs. Inglethorpe married Mr. Alfred Inglethorpe, a man disliked much to the Cavendish family.

As with most Christie books, there are lots of characters introduced at the beginning of the story, all with some sort of connection with the murder victim, therefore all being suspects.

Gradually though, the story unfolds, with clues which explain many things, how the victim was murdered, who the murderer was, and how suspicions were aroused etc, etc…
Poirot, as I have already mentioned, is the main detective in the novel, although Hastings, who is a good friend of Poirot’s, and explains at the beginning of the book to Mary Inglethorpe, that he had always “had a secret hankering to be a detective” (“Sherlock Holmes by all means!”) plays the part of Poirot’s informal assistant.

Like many of Christie’s books, the detail in “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” is immense, and the story well thought out. The characters in the book are very lifelike, and each have their own strong personality, which is very hard to find in many detective novels.

**Conclusion.

In the whole book, there wasn’t really anything that I could pick out as my favourite part, because it was really very good. Like all Christie novels, I love the way that the story is written in good old fashioned “very English” style, as you find other famous English writer’s stories, such as Dickens written in.

I’ve always loved this book, ever since I received it when I was about fifteen, and it has always been my favourite Christie mystery. Even thoug
h my copy of the book is now extremely battered, it still has a place on my bookshelf (Though I have to admit is usually in my hands being read than there…!)

The Mysterious Affair at Styles has to be the best book if you’re looking for an introduction to Christie, or indeed detective novels on the whole. I personally think that it’s one of her best writings, although it’s obviously not her most famous. The book is easy to follow, and Christie has a great way of keeping the criminal to the very end…

Anyway, there isn’t really much else to say, except you’ll have to read the book to find out the ending, and if you don’t want to read it because of that, then I’d recommend you read it for the pure sake of doing so – I guarantee you’ll enjoy it!

noodle.gorillaz2001©

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