Read Christie 2021 - The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The book that made the man with the little moustache known to the world.

Name: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Writer: Agatha Christie

Country: United Kingdom

Year: 1920

Genre: Detective novel

Synopsis:

Emily Inglethorp is an elderly lady that holds control over the family’s fortune ever since her husband, Mr. Cavendish, passed away. When the lady decides to remarry someone much younger, the rest of the family starts to worry. The mood is tense in the country mansion of Styles. When Emily is found dead in her bedroom, Hercule Poirot is forced to take action.

Review

This is the first post of the Read Christie 2021 challenge, our choice for january. I confess that I was excited to start this challenge. I had already read this book a couple of years ago, so this was a rereading.

The narrative is made by Poirot’ friend and partner of investigation, Captain Hastings, who spends a season in Styles by invitation from John Cavendish. There, he is met with a tense environment due to the new marriage of John’s stepmother, Emily, to Alfred Inglethorp. The days go by until the inevitable happens. Emily Inglethorp is poisoned. Aware of the severity of the situation, Hastings decides to ask for his friend Hercule Poirot’s help. The investigation starts and several theories come to life and are cast aside, both by the detective and the reader. Until the culprit is revealed and all the evidence of its guilt - brilliantly left throughout the book - is exposed by the belgian detective.

If there is something that has always fascinated me in Agatha Christie’s books is the plot. It becomes so complex and tortuous like a ball of wool, in which the reader gets tangled and loses the direction several times. Even though I had read it a few years ago, I didn’t remember who the culprit was, exactly for the reason I mentioned before. The author’s writing is fluid and lets us know from the beginning the character that will be in the “eye of the hurricane”, as well as the place where it will all unfold. From that point on, Christie leaves clues in hopes that the reader will follow them, so that she can surprise in the end.

And mentioning the ending, there is a good reason for the author’s nickname of “Dame of Crime”. When we find out the real perpetrator, we conclude that we were too naive in thinking we would find out the killer. In part, I must admit that the clues that the author leaves throughout the book, didn’t sidetrack me as much as they did the first time I read it, and in a way I got the criminal right. However, I was still surprised with the conclusion of the crime.

Whisper of the Heart

The mysterious case of Styles was the first detective novel by Agatha Christie. Published in 1920 in the United Kingdom, it only reached Portugal in 1950. Although inexperienced, Christie pleased readers and critics at the time, and has been doing it throughout the years. She was challenged by her sister Madge to write a mystery, and she did it with great mastery.

"Poirot was an extraordinary looking little man. He was hardly more than five feet, four inches, but carried himself with great dignity." (Hastings, The Mysterious Affair at Styles)

The book introduces the detective Hercule Poirot, Inspector Japp and Arthur Hastings to the public. Inspired by real life elements that surrounded her, Agatha took advantage of her job as a nurse at a dispensary to create Poirot and the method used to commit the crime, and that is notorious for the way that the dangers of working with poisons are approached.

An observer of human nature, Christie ended up using that skill to create a rich story in small plot within the main narrative, where she also talked about feminine duality through Mary Cavendish, and how easy it is to distort things when they are only partially heard, as ended up happening with the statement from the character Dorcas, the Cavendish family maid. Sometimes, we create wrong opinions about people by hearing only one side of the story.

If there is something that I learned from the Dame of Crime’s books, was that:

“Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.” (Poirot, The Mysterious Affair at Styles)

And what about you, do you use your instincts when you read detective novels?

Rating - 🟉🟉🟉🟉🟉🟉🟉🟉🟉🟉 (10)