Agatha Christie | Earth and Skye

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.

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The Murder on the Links ->

Image source: Kobo

Poirot - Murder On The Orient Express [Illustrated Deluxe Edition] :HarperCollins Australia

Title: Murder on the Orient Express
Author: Agatha Christie
Series: Hercule Poirot #10
Rating Out of 5: 4 (Really good read!)
My Bookshelves: Crime, Mystery
Dates read: 10th – 24th November 2020
Pace: Medium
Format: Novel
Publisher: Harper Collins
Year: 1934
5th sentence, 74th page: This is where I’m supposed to go all goosefleshy down the back.

‘The murderer is with us – on the train now…’

Just after midnight, a snowstorm stops the famous Orient Express in its tracks. A passenger is brutally murdered, and the luxurious train is no longer a place of safety. Everyone is a suspect.

This illustrated edition contains the complete text of Agatha Christie’s II Murder on the Orient Express, II together with 200 glorious production paintings and sumptuous photos from the new film, directed by Kenneth Branagh.

Wow. This was a pretty, seriously intense novel. I knew that it probably would be, considering it’s so damn well-known and popular. But I really didn’t expect… this level of awesomeness. Now I just desperately want more of these books on my shelves!

Recently, I’ve been watching some Agatha Christie movies with one of my clients. I can never guess who the culprit is in these (all except one thus far have come as a complete shock). This is such a wonderfully new experience for my crazy brain that I was looking forward to trying to match my wits to this storyline. And I couldn’t predict this either, every time I thought that I might be beginning to put all of the puzzle pieces together… Christie threw another curveball my way. It was brilliant and wonderful.

One of the things about this story that I did struggle with was the amount of characters. I actually struggled to keep all of the pieces in my brain and keep track of who was who. What the motives were. What the evidence was… I’ve been assured that that’s unique to this Hercule Poirot story, but it was certainly a little bit difficult. I’m just grateful that I had the movie edition of this book, so there were many pictures to help me sort out what exactly was happening…

The thing that I loved the most about this was that I just couldn’t predict what was going to happen. This surprise, partnered with the humour and Christie’s ability to completely change register and language style completely hooked me. I am most certainly in love with this and can’t wait to get my hands on some more Agatha Christie novels…

<- Lord Edgware Dies

Three Act Tragedy ->

Image source: HarperCollins Australia

Earth and Skye

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Tag Archives: Agatha Christie

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie