Review: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This review is also found on Goodreads! :)
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Actual Rating: 3.8 stars
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To be completely honest, I didn't enjoy this book as much as I'd expected. I love mysteries and I love Christie (despite my still-limited knowledge of her works), but this book didn't really took hold of me, unlike And Then There Were None. As full disclosure, aside from the fact that this being penned by Christie, the only other reason I gave this book a try was because it served as an exordium to reading the book that completely changed Christie's career: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, a book awarded as the best crime novel ever.



But I digress. I understand now why there wasn't really much of a frenzy or fanfare surrounding TMAAS. It was widely regarded, no doubt, but not as much as Christie's other books. It only introduced one keen-eyed detective, Hercule Poirot, but the mystery was a bit predictable. I'm not an investigative expert, but some of the clues and circumstances are obvious the moment they were first mentioned, while Arthur Hastings (who I personally believe is a bumbling idiot) took pains in realizing what Poirot was getting at. Plus, there is this lingering suspicion that proud Hastings fancy Poirot, too much.

Another thing that contributed to immense confusion is the vernacular. Christie wrote this in 1916, in which she employs (on all her books) a command of a more traditional form of the English language. Of course, not at a Shakespearean level, but at a level hard for me to grasp nonetheless. This is definitely not a fault of Christie as she wrote in her time with all the flair and authenticity one would expect of her. This is a limitation on my part as a reader, which I fully acknowledge. This then gives me a motivation to get acquainted her style of writing, and with more reason to look forward to my next Hercule Poirot read. ;)

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Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.

Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend...You cannot mix up sentiment and reason.

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