Description
Agatha Christie’s first ever murder mystery, reissued with a striking new cover – includes for the first time the original courtroom climax as an alternate ending.
‘Beware! Peril to the detective who says: “It is so small – it does not matter…” Everything matters.’
After the Great War, life can never be the same again. Wounds need healing, and the horror of violent death banished into memory.
Captain Arthur Hastings is invited to the rolling country estate of Styles to recuperate from injuries sustained at the Front. It is the last place he expects to encounter murder. Fortunately he knows a former detective, a Belgian refugee, who has grown bored of retirement …
The first Hercule Poirot mystery, now published with a previously deleted chapter and introduced by Agatha Christie expert Dr John Curran.
Katherine Brown –
It has been years since I first read one of Agatha Christie’s Poirot stories, and I’ve never had the pleasure of reading her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, before. If you are already a fan of the Queen of Crime or if you have never read her work but like a good murder mystery, her first novel is a must.
It is a delightful (well as delightful as murder can be) whodunit introducing Poirot and his famous ‘little grey cells’. Written from the perspective of Arthur Hastings, Christie’s first novel is told by a reliable, if not as insightful as Hercule himself could be, narrator who takes us faithfully through a twisting plot mixing together human nature with poison.