Mysterious Affair at Styles Annotated

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Agatha Christie: Mysterious Affair at Styles Annotated (2021, Independently Published)

English language

Published Nov. 20, 2021 by Independently Published.

ISBN:
979-8-7706-7184-1
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3 stars (1 review)

Set in the summer of 1917 in an Essex country estate, the story follows the war-wounded Captain Arthur Hastings to the Styles St. Mary manor of his friend John Cavendish. The Cavendish household is wrought with tension due to the marriage of John's widowed old aunt Emily, she of a sizeable fortune, to a suspicious younger man, Alfred Inglethorp, twenty years her junior. Emily's two stepsons, John and Lawrence Cavendish, as well as John's wife Mary and several other people, also live at Styles. Late one night, the residents of Styles wake to find Emily Inglethorp dying. When Emily's sudden heart attack is found to be attributable to strychnine, Hastings, who had runs into his old friend, the Belgian Hercule Poirot, he recruits him to aid in the local investigation. With impeccable timing, Hercule Poirot, the insightful retired detective, makes his dramatic entrance to solve a most baffling case.

Who …

102 editions

Enjoyable but dated

3 stars

Enjoyable and I didn’t fully pick up on all the clues or guess the identity of the culprit (unlike The Mousetrap). The general story of the book has aged well, but some of the dialogue has not - characters make casual racist, sexist and antisemitic remarks, which I don’t think would be the case if this book was written today.