The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

 

Review of the novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie.

Published by John Lane Company, The Bodley Head, on 21st January 1921.

Cost: 2ꞌ6 1958 [£7.99]

ISBN 9780007119271 (Paperback Edition - 190 pages)

I have read this book a number of times and as this is a special year for the book, to be celebrated at The International Agatha Christie Festival in Torquay in September 2016, it seemed like a good time to review the novel.

Not only is The Mysterious Affair at Styles Christie’s first novel, it is our introduction to Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings. Their relationship started before this case and it because of that, that Hasting draws in Poirot to investigate the sudden death of his friend’s mother. As with a number of the Poirot stories, Hastings is the narrator of the tale and we see the case unravel through his eyes.

Hastings is invited to continue his convalesce from the war, at the home of John Cavendish and his family, a country-place called Styles Court, in Essex. The investigation revolves around the death of Mrs Inglethorp, who at the age of 70, was not well, but lived her life to the full.

In chapter 1 we are introduced to all the possible murder suspects and although the story is not a locked room situation, it is the characters within the Styles Court house that must have committed the murder of Mrs Inglethorp. Each individual is paraded before the reader, they all have a motive and the possibility of having committed the crime, except one.

It is not until chapter 2 that the reader is introduced to Poirot; Hastings ‘cannoned into a little man’ as he enters the village post office. However, it is half a page later that Hastings describes this individual:

Poirot was an extraordinary-looking little man. He was hardly more than five feet four inches, but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible.

[He] had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police. As a detective, his flair had been extraordinary, and he had achieved triumphs by unravelling some of the most baffling cases of the day.

Christie has taken her time in introducing Poirot and his credentials to her readers but develops them further in the story.

At the time of writing, Christie was not bound to the rules of the detective club, to which she was later to become member and president, but she was an avid reader of detective novels and knew how to craft a story according to the rules of her peers.

Christie presents her readers with clues, some red-herrings, but just like Hastings, it is difficult to be persuaded that the crime was committed by anyone else than the obvious individual.

As Poirot is staying in the village, and not at Styles Court, he is unable to carry out some of the detective work he would like to and encourages various individuals, including Hastings, to do some of the detective work on his behalf. We are soon made aware that Hastings does not always see the facts laid out before him.

Although this is the first Christie novel and the first time we are introduced to Poirot, she also introduces Detective Chief Inspector James Japp of Scotland Yard in chapter 7; a character that would appear in a further six Christie novels.

In this story we discover Christie’s incredible knowledge of poisons. During World War I, as a volunteer nurse in a Torquay hospital, she developed a lifetime interest in toxicology. She studied and qualified as an apothecary’s assistant in 1917. In all, Christie was to poison more than 300 characters in her stories.

In The Mysterious Affair of Styles, we learn about the detection methods of strychnine; its effect on the taste of food, and hot drinks.

At the end of the story, Poirot gathers all the suspects in to one room and reveals his findings; accusing and questioning each individual’s behaviour in the lead up to Mrs Inglethorp’s death. The solution involves one item that Christie has kept back from the reader, although in hindsight it must have taken place.

It is an excellent novel, and I have enjoyed reading again. It’s a must read for Christie fans.  Rating: 5 stars

Dr James Sheppard

16 February 2016

My recent Reading 2016

My Recent Reading: 40 in 2016

Date	Book Title	Author	Notes / Rating
12th December 2016	Mince Pies & Mistletoe at the Christmas Market	Heidi Swain	5 stars
1st December 2016	The Best of the Christmas Mysteries	Collection	4 stars
21st November 2016	Twelve Days of Christmas	Debbie Macomber	5 stars
15th November 2016	A Time to Die	Tom Wood	4 stars
9th November 2016	Predator	Wilbur Smith	4 stars
4th November 2016	The Isis Covenant	James Douglas	4 stars
29th October 2016	Broken Heart	Tim Weaver	4 stars
24th October 2016	Make Me	Lee Child	5 stars
20th October 2016	Never Go back	Lee Child	5 stars
12th October 2016	Broken Heart	Tim Weaver	5 stars
7th October 2016	A Deadly Orientation	Dawn Nelson	5 stars
1st October 2016	The ISIS Covenant	James Douglas	4 stars
19th September 2016	The World Book of Happiness	Leo Bormans	5 stars
12th September 2016	The Lake House	Kate Morton	5 stars
6th September 2016	Closed Casket	Sophie Hannah	5 stars
3rd September 2016	Cometh the Hour	Jeffrey Archer	5 stars
20th August 2016	Depraved Heart	Patricia Cornwall	5 stars
15th August 2016	The Girl in the Spider’s Web	David Lagercrantz	5 stars
8th August 2016	The Thirteen Problems	Agatha Christie	4 stars
31st July 2016	Harry Potter and the Cursed Child	J. K. Rowling	5 stars
25th July 2016	Rebecca’s Tale	Sally Beauman	5 stars
6th June 2016	The Murder at the Vicarage	Agatha Christie	5 stars
27th May 2016	The Girl on the Train	Paula Hawkins	4 stars
19th May 2016	The Storm Sister	Lucinda Riley	4 stars
5th May 2016	Gone Girl	Gillian Flynn	5 stars
2nd May 2016	The Mystery of the Blue Train	Agatha Christie	3 stars
23rd April 2016	The Sacred Sword	Scott Martiani	4 stars
15th April 2016	Northanger Abbey	Val McDermid	3 stars
6th April 2016	Cry Wolf	Wilbur Smith	5 stars
3rd April 2016	Ghost Flight	Bear Grylls	4 stars
20th March 2016	The Angel Tree	Lucinda Riley	4 stars
14th March 2016	Under the Parish Lantern	Fred Archer	3 stars
29th February 2016	Murder of a Lady	Anthony Wynne	3 stars
19th February 2016	Havana Storm	Clive Cussler	4 stars
8th February 2016	Private Sydney	James Patterson	5 stars
4th February 2016	The Revenant	Michael Punke	5 stars
29th January 2016	The Mysterious Affair at Styles	Agatha Christie	5 stars
25th January 2016	Mystery in White	J.Jefferson Farjeon	3 stars
18th January 2016	Antidote to Venom	Freeman Wills Crofts	3 stars
28th December 2015	The Santa Klaus Murder	Mavis Dorial Hay	4 stars

And Then There Were None (The Novel) by Agatha Christie

And Then There Were None (The Novel)

Review of the novel And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.

Published by Harper Collins on 6^th November 1939.

Cost: 3’6 1965, £12.99 2015

ISBN 978-0-00-752530-0 (Facsimile Edition - 252 pages)

I recently reviewed the play of the same name, when it was performed by The Agatha Christie Theatre Company, in January 2015

The story was serialised in the UK in twenty-three parts in the Daily Express on 6^th June to 1^st July 1939, but first published as a novel in the UK on 6^th November 1929. Please be aware that this review will contain spoilers for individuals new to the story.

The novel is having a revival in 2015 as it is the 76^th anniversary year for the story. It started with the play being performed in Windsor, Berkshire, UK, in January and going on tour around the UK, finishing in Torquay, Devon, UK, on 20^th September 2015 and will culminate with the BBC showing their own three-part production starting on Boxing day in December 2015. As the novel was being discussed in various circles at The International Agatha Christie Festival in September I felt it was time to revisit the novel and look at how Christie handles the difficult concept of delight of individuals to distraught individuals, as they come to terms with their unusual predicament.

This is an iconic story of a serial killer, picking off individuals one by one while stranded on an isolated island off the coast of Devon in the UK. The story is widely regarded as an Agatha Christie masterpiece. Inspired by an old-fashioned nursery rhyme, it was published two months after the start of WWII. Following the success of the book, it was soon turned into a play by Christie and has had no less than six film and TV adaptations.

At the start of the novel we discover that ten very different individuals have been invited to a luxury hotel, located on an island off the coast of Devon, each receiving a tailor-made invitation that was too good to refuse.

Vera Claythorn recalls:

“I’m frightfully thrilled at the prospect of seeing Soldier Island. There’s been such a lot about it in the papers. Is it really very fascinating?”

Later in her bedroom at the hotel she assesses her surroundings:

Over the mantelpiece of the fireplace was a big square parchment – a poem, in a gleaming chromium frame. She read it. It was the old nursery rhyme that she remembered from her childhood days.

Ten little soldier boys went to dine …

Dr Armstrong is the last of the ten individuals to arrive at the island and on his journey across from the mainland he found time to reflect:

“There was something magical about an island – the mere word suggested fantasy. You lost touch with the world – an island was a world of its own. A world perhaps, from which you might never return.”

In chapter two Christie introduces the guests as individuals, giving some background to the characters as they prepare for dinner and we learn that two of them seem to know of each other, but it is after the meal that the story takes a strange turn. The guests become aware of a small round table situated to one side of the room and on it are placed ten little china figures; they comment that each of their rooms have the nursery rhyme framed, hanging on the wall in the bedrooms...

At twenty minutes past nine a gramophone record plays, not music, but spoken words.‘... there was a silence, a replete silence. Into that silence came The Voice. Without warning, inhuman, penetrating …’

             “Ladies and gentlemen! Silence please!”

Christie’s characters are suddenly startled and the reader can feel a change of tone in the story and notes a disturbing atmosphere within the hotel lounge.

            “You are charged with the following indictments:

“Edward George Armstrong, that you did upon the 14^th day of March 1925, cause the death of Lousia Mary Clees.

“Emily Caroline Brent, that upon the 5^th of November, 1931, you were responsible for the death of Beatrice Taylor.”

Each of the ten individuals is charged with the death of one or more people. Unsettled, the ten individuals protest their innocence, however, after challenging questions from those in the room, they admit their part in the indictments.

Christie now changes the mood of the story and her characters; they have lost the delight at arriving at the luxury hotel and want to leave immediately. The urge to leave is heightened when one of the party is declared dead and they find one of the china figures broken. The remaining individuals become weary of each other and are unsure whether safety lies on being in their own or being part of a group. Over the next one hundred pages Christie kills off her characters, linking the method of murder to a verse of the Ten Little Soldier Boy’s nursery rhyme. All the characters are killed off-stage, she does not describe the gory scenes, leaving that to her reader’s imagination, but it is very clear how each individual has lost their life, ten very different methods.

Agatha Christie has set her reader, and her characters in the story, a puzzle to solve; she is at her best as she takes us along an intriguing tale. Just as her characters search for the murderer, the pace of the tale encourages the reader to race towards the conclusion in an attempt to find out who the murder is, having had to change their own thoughts as they progress through the story. An unsuspecting end to a black story.

Adaptations of this novel to film and plays have taken poetic license to change the ending for their audience. The location has also varied, but it remains a locked room scenario, there is only one possible solution.

This novel is Agatha Christie at her best, an estimate of 100 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide. It is an outstanding novel, and I have enjoyed reading again. A true Agatha Christie 'whodunit'. Rating: 5 stars

Dr James Sheppard

17 December 2015