The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
Blurb:
My review:
Christie's first, and an auspicious
beginning, despite the old-fashioned approach (written in 1917, five
years before The Secret Adversary
and six before the next Poirot, The
Murder on the Links). The style is particularly dated,
abounding in floridly Edwardian excesses and melodramatic exclamations,
which also feature rather too prominently in the plot--the Mary
Cavendish and Dr. Bauerstein sub-plots rather obscure the central
business: the poisoning by strychnine of Mrs. Inglethorp by one of her
dependents (who contribute to the War by holding fetes, bazaars and
speeches--the two women work, while the young men, rather than doing
their bit for King and Country, pursue their love affairs), and solved
by Poirot. The little Belgian is more of a comic foreigner
monstrosity than he would be by 1926 (The
Murder of Roger Ackroyd), but does some excellent detection,
mainly reasoning from physical clues (e.g., the fire). Like
Hanaud and Holmes, he has the egregious habit of keeping too much too
himself: we should have been told
about the taste of the coffee and the mud in the boudoir. Rather
than having the opportunity of working things out for himself, the
reader must perforce be content to marvel and admire. (It is also
difficult to credit that a man who continually stoops to keyholes in
later tales would not rifle through the papers in the despatch-case:
his failure to do so is too obviously a convenient plot device.)
The solution he discovers, however, triumphantly jutsifies his
behaviour: the murderer is one we suspected all along but were
misdirected into dismissing; the method is both ingenious and eminently
practical; and there is a sound use of the law. All things
considered, an excellent début.