The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie **

Reading dates: 14 November – 4 December 2024

I used to be a fan of Agatha Christie although I never read too many of her books. I had never read Poirot or Marple so I picked up this one, enchanted by the idea of it being the first Poirot mystery. Perhaps it is the TV portrayal of the formidable detective, but between his methods of detection and the triteness of the strychnine poison, I was not as excited as I should be. Bored would be going too far, as the mystery is still charming, but something about it felt ‘by numbers’. Now, I don’t know what came first, the mystery of the number … Christie has seeped into the collective unconscious so much with her characterisation of Poirot that part of me thinks she is an innovator and I am just reading it too late.

“Instinct is a marvellous thing,” mused Poirot. “It can neither be explained nor ignored.”

Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.