Title: The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Author: Agatha Christie
Series: Hercule Poirot #1
Rating Out of 5: 4 (Really good read!)
My Bookshelves: Cozy mystery, Crime, Mystery
Pace: Medium
Format: eBook, Novel
Year: 1920

I read Murder on the Orient Express a long while ago, and then just didn’t get around to reading more of the Hercule Poirot series. Now I’m wondering why it took me so long to pick up this book. It was a fun and easy read. With a whole lot going on. Honestly, you could skim read and just float on the story line, or you could delve deeper (like I did) and spend the whole time trying to figure out just who the culprit was.

This is one of those books / series that I know will be a pleasure to reread. Christie manages to leave clue upon clue, but you only realise this in hindsight. Then there are plenty of red herrings that lead you to dead ends and down rabbit holes. I love that this is kind of confusing and meandering, yet, somehow it’s also fairly linear and simple. If you’re not like me and just happy to find out the culprit at the end, the story would be such a simple read.

To make this story even more compelling, and increase the difficulty of guessing the villain, every single suspect in this story has something to hide. It was a lot of fun trying to figure out which secrets were about the murder, and which ones were just people being horrible. It was nice that some of these secrets also weren’t so sinister. And that they actually lead to a nice happy ending.

I truly enjoyed this novel. It was a closed room mystery with a lot of intrigue and twists. I loved trying to figure out everyone’s secrets and now I can’t wait to dive into the next Poirot novel… it’s easy to see why these books are considered such classics.

<- More Agatha Christie

The Murder on the Links ->

Image source: Kobo