The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Hercule Poirot, #1) in Read Runners

Jan 26, 2015 ~~Poulomi Sylphrena Tonk$~~ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, ravenclaw-mmp

4 coffee cups and coco stars!

Years after I’ve exhausted all my raving and fangirling energy on Sherlock Holmes, I finally made up my mind to try Agatha Christie and see what the hype was all about. I was cynical, because I knew I would weigh everything against Sherlock. Or maybe Harry Dresden, who is a close and recent runner-up when it comes to those involved in espionage and the like. But Poirot was dissimilar in many ways, both in form and method, and thanks to that, I ended up quite liki ...more

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Oct 30, 2013 LindaH rated it it was ok

Shelves: mysteries

It's hard to give this classic only two stars but I'm rating MY reading experience. I chose to read The Mysterious Affair at Styles because it is Agatha Christie's first mystery featuring the detective Hercule Poirot (1920), and since she ("the Queen of Mystery") rose to best-selling stardom, I wanted to see what she contributed to the wildly successful literary genre, Mystery.

I'd begun my very brief little search into the beginnings of the Whodunit by rereading Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan It's hard to give this classic only two stars but I'm rating MY reading experience. I chose to read The Mysterious Affair at Styles because it is Agatha Christie's first mystery featuring the detective Hercule Poirot (1920), and since she ("the Queen of Mystery") rose to best-selling stardom, I wanted to see what she contributed to the wildly successful literary genre, Mystery.

I'd begun my very brief little search into the beginnings of the Whodunit by rereading Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, specifically The Murders at the Rue Morgue (1841), considered to be the first mystery, and A Study in Scarlet (1887) which introduced Sherlock Holmes. Here was my greatest surprise: Conan Doyle did not invent the brilliant detective, Poe did. Poe's hero, C. Auguste Dupin, boasts about how easy solving a particular crime will be, by using careful observation and logical deduction, and he claims to know the murderer's identity long before his friend (the narrator) or the reader does. Does this sound at all familar? Holmes and his Watson? So what did Conan Doyle bring to the table?

But first, there are a couple of great pieces of literature that bear mentioning in the chronology of mystery. Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White (1859) was the first mystery novel, Poe's work being a short story. Collins told his story in the first person from multiple points of view. He combined careful observation and logical deduction (Poe's contribution) with something new to the detective story: the study of motivation. Charles Dickens took the question of motivation even further by focusing on the perpetrator in The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), and making the why of the murder and how the murderer would be discovered, the mystery. Dickens had just introduced a detective-like character, Datchery, when he died, leaving the book half-finished.

By the time Conan Doyle created the most famous of all detectives, 18 years after Dickens died, the mystery-themed story was poised to become popular with the mass audience. The main ingredients were there: a brilliant detective, a trail of clues, buried secrets, more than one suspect, the question of motivation. All that was needed was a writer who knew how to engage the popular interest. This Arthur Conan did. We all know how long lines formed to buy the new hot-off-the-press magazine containing the next Sherlock Holmes adventure. A well-loved genre was born.

Which brings me back to Agatha Christie. I didn't think her first mystery was very well-written. For instance, Poirot's friend Hastings who is narrating the story (Poirot's Watson if you will) says at least 20-40 times in the last two chapters, "There is only one thing I don't understand..." Nevertheless, Christie does something in The Mysterious Affair at Styles that will make her mysteries addictive. She creates a complicated mystery, with clues so obscure, that only the intuitive Poiret can explain them. Christie keeps challenging Hastings (and thus the reader) to come up with the solution, but only Poirot (and thus the author) can know what really happened.

Despite the fact that Christie had this very salable idea from the get-go, and went on to write 69 more novels plus a hundred short stories and a dozen plays, I admit to finding the cliche-ridden text a bit tedious. It sometimes seemed like a parody of itself, which is a reach for a debut novel. How to explain this ho-hum reading experience? I do remember devouring her books when I was starting down the path of mystery addiction, and this, plus subsequently reading countless mystery series by countless mystery authors under the influence of Agatha Christie, may have something to do with it. ...more

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Aug 28, 2016 Neeti rated it really liked it

A good book. Hercule Poirot being the matchmaker :') The story and the mystery was appealing. The final explanation, enlightening. I couldn't digest the inquest parts, so it dulled the book for me a bit. 3.5 stars! ...more

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