In the early hours of a July morning, the household at Styles Court wakes to terrible sounds from Mrs Inglethorp’s bedroom. The doors are bolted from the inside. By the time the men break in, she is in violent convulsions, and within minutes she is dead. The Mysterious Affair at Styles is the first published book by Agatha Christie, written in 1916 during the First World War and published in 1920. It is also where Hercule Poirot, Captain Hastings and Inspector Japp all make their first appearance.
Plot Summary: Strychnine at Styles Court
Hastings has been sent home wounded from the Front. After months in a convalescent home, he has a month’s sick leave and nowhere much to go. An old friend, John Cavendish, invites him to Styles Court, his stepmother’s manor house in Essex, near the village of Styles St Mary.
The house is not a happy one. Emily Inglethorp, rich and strong-willed, has just married Alfred Inglethorp, a man at least twenty years younger, and the family cannot stand him. When she dies, the doctors find strychnine. Everyone in the house had a reason to want her money or her silence. There is her new husband, and her two stepsons, John and Lawrence. There is John’s wife, Mary Cavendish, and her loyal companion, Evelyn Howard. And there is young Cynthia Murdoch, who works at the local hospital. Who will inherit her fortune depends on a will that keeps changing.
By chance, Hastings has just met an old acquaintance in the village. Hercule Poirot, once a famous Belgian policeman, is living there as a refugee of the Great War, thanks to Mrs Inglethorp’s charity. Hastings persuades the family to ask Poirot to investigate.
Who Is the Main Character? Hercule Poirot, From His First Page
The Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is small, precise, vain about his moustache and very fond of order. He talks about his “little grey cells” already in this first book. He is a retired professional, not a gifted amateur, and he treats the case as a problem of method. The character of Poirot was inspired by real Belgian refugees, as we explain below.
Hastings tells the story. He is kind, loyal and almost always wrong, which is exactly what a narrator beside Poirot should be. Detective Inspector James Japp of Scotland Yard, who knew Poirot in Belgium, arrives later with the official investigation. All three would return many times.
Our Review: How Poirot Investigates, and Why Hastings Misses the Point
For a debut, this is remarkably assured. The clues are laid out fairly, the red herrings are placed with care, and the suspects all have something to hide. The final gathering, where Poirot lays out the whole case to everyone at once, set the pattern for dozens of Poirot mysteries to come. The poison plot is technically careful. Christie knew her subject, and it shows in every detail about the dose and the timing.
The fun is in watching Poirot and Hastings together. At one point Hastings decides, not for the first time, that his poor old friend must be losing his grip. Poirot, meanwhile, tells him that “imagination is a good servant, and a bad master”, and adds that the simplest explanation is always the most likely. Then he goes on following the facts.
The middle section drags a little, with long inquest scenes and legal detail. Hastings can be maddening, and the pace is slower than modern readers expect. There are also period attitudes, including antisemitic remarks about one character. Still, the solution is clever and fair, and it holds up on a second reading. Poirot fans will enjoy seeing how much of him is already here.
Key Themes: The Great War at Home, Money and Marriage
The war is everywhere, even though no battle is shown. Hastings is a wounded officer on leave, and Poirot is a refugee. The women of the house do war work: Cynthia in a hospital, Mary on the land. The second theme is money. Emily Inglethorp controls the family fortune, and her will is the question behind every quarrel. The third is marriage, and the strain of a marriage the family sees as a mistake. Over all of it sits Poirot’s belief in order and method against guesswork.
Who Wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles?
Agatha Christie began it in her mid-twenties, and she had previously never written a book. During the war she was working as a nurse at the Red Cross hospital in Torquay. Later she moved to its dispensary, where she learned about medicines and poisons. She later said that, surrounded by poisons, it was natural she chose poisoning as the method.
The idea came from a challenge. Her older sister, Madge, had told her she could not write a detective story. The detective came from real life too: a small colony of Belgian refugees in Torquay gave her the idea of a Belgian detective. She finished the book during a two-week stay at the Moorland Hotel on Dartmoor. Later, she and her first husband, Archie, named their house in Sunningdale “Styles” after the one in the novel. Dame Agatha went on to write sixty-six detective novels, but the pattern of Christie and Poirot starts here.
When Was The Mysterious Affair at Styles Published? And the Scene Where Poirot Explains
Getting it published took years. Several publishers turned it down before John Lane of The Bodley Head accepted it. He asked for one change: Poirot’s explanation was originally set in a courtroom, and Christie moved it to a gathering of the suspects. The book first ran as a serial in The Times Weekly Edition in 1920. John Lane published it in New York in October 1920, and The Bodley Head followed in London in January 1921. Christie dedicated it to her mother. In 1935 it became one of the first ten Penguin paperbacks.
Adaptations: From David Suchet to Peter Dinklage
- 1990: a feature-length episode of the ITV Poirot series, with David Suchet, Hugh Fraser and Philip Jackson, filmed at Chavenage House in Gloucestershire
- 1990: a Latvian television mini-series that keeps Christie’s original courtroom ending
- 2005: a five-part BBC Radio 4 drama with John Moffatt as Poirot
- 2012 and 2016: stage adaptations in Cleveland, Ohio, and Media, Pennsylvania
- 2020: a French graphic novel
- 2024: an Audible full-cast drama with Peter Dinklage as Poirot and Himesh Patel as Hastings
Where to Watch or Stream It
The 1990 television version is the one to watch. At the time of writing it streams on BritBox and Acorn TV in the United States and on ITVX in the UK. It is also on DVD. Streaming rights change often, so check a guide such as JustWatch for your country.
Why is The Mysterious Affair at Styles in season 3 of the TV series?
The series did not film the books in order. The first two series adapted later stories. Poirot’s first case was made between series 2 and 3 as a feature-length special for the centenary of Christie’s birth. She was born on 15 September 1890, and the episode aired on 16 September 1990. It was then counted as the first episode of series 3, and streaming services list it as season 3, episode 1.
Where to Buy It
In the United States the novel is in the public domain, so you can read it free on Project Gutenberg or Standard Ebooks. In the UK and Europe it is still in copyright, and HarperCollins publishes the paperback, ebook and audiobook. It is a short novel of under 60,000 words, about three and a half hours of reading. Libraries also lend the ebook and audiobook through apps such as Libby.
They Go to Styles Again: Where It Fits in the Poirot Series
This is the first Hercule Poirot mystery. The next is The Murder on the Links (1923), and then the stories of Poirot Investigates (1924). The circle closes in Curtain (1975), when the two friends return to the house for Poirot’s last case. Read this one first and the ending of Curtain hits much harder.
For the most famous of the early Poirot books, see our The Murder of Roger Ackroyd review. Later, and better known still, is Murder on the Orient Express. Christie’s other great detective begins in The Murder at the Vicarage.
Quick Facts
| Author | Agatha Christie |
|---|---|
| Series | Hercule Poirot, first novel |
| First published | October 1920, John Lane, New York; January 1921, The Bodley Head, London |
| Illustrations | Plans of the house and the bedroom, facsimiles of a letter and a charred fragment |
| Setting | Styles Court, a country house in Essex, during the First World War |
| Sleuth | Hercule Poirot, with Hastings and Inspector Japp |
| TV | Agatha Christie’s Poirot, 1990 |
| Next book | The Murder on the Links (1923) |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it a locked-room mystery?
Not really. The bedroom doors are bolted, and that matters, but the murder is by poison, so the puzzle is about who gave it and when.
Is The Mysterious Affair at Styles a cozy mystery?
It is a Golden Age detective novel with a country house, a closed circle of suspects and no gore. The modern cozy grew out of books like it. For gentler English mysteries, see our British cozy mysteries.
What is the most controversial Agatha Christie book?
Not this one. The usual answer is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, for a twist that some readers thought broke the rules of fair play.
Do I have to read it before other Poirot books?
No, but it is the natural place to start, and it makes the last Poirot novel, Curtain, much more moving.
Where does the story take place?
At Styles Court, a country house in Essex near the fictional village of Styles St Mary, in July, during the First World War.