Starting at the very beginning is a good place to start, but is very rarely the best part of a writer's career. A good mystery, but Christie's best was yet to come.
Summary:
On recovery from his time at the front, Mr. Hastings goes to stay with his childhood friends in their lavish country home of Styles. But not all is as rosy as he remembers. The lady of the house has remarried to become Mrs. Inglethorp, an arrangement that has thrown her stepsons, her friends, and the whole household into an uproar. So who does everyone suspect when the grand dame is poisoned? Why her husband, of course. Who would think otherwise? Who except the great Hercule Poirot, detective extraordinaire, whom Hasting quickly rushes back to town to bring into the case. The murderer could be anyone and only the most clever sleuth will find the truth.
Verdict: 7/10
My growing love of the mistress of mystery led me back to her roots. Not only was Styles was the first novel featuring Hercule Poirot, it was Christie's first novel ever!
In many ways, the story opens like an average mystery. A will is made, infidelity hinted at, and a murder committed. There is one clear suspect, who is quickly cleared of suspicion as it is too obvious, and then we're left wondering 'who else?' The best with Christie is that it would literally be anyone, even if you think they're 100% innocent.
Christie has a way with adding layer upon layer upon layer, with clues branching into different directions. She knows the likelihood of which trail the readers may follow and creates another fork in the road to keep things interesting. And only at the end do you realize you and everyone else were on the wrong path entirely.
Really that was the whole aim. Christie's sister challenged her to write a story in which the reader had all the same clues as the detective but would still be shocked by the ending. And in that sense, she succeeds (as always). Even when you think you chose the person everyone would never guess (as so many mysteries do), Poirot reveals the real no-chance suspect that you never thought to look at. I could make a case for Lawrence or Cynthia being the culprit. Or Mary. Or Dr. Bauerstein. And they'd all be plausible. All the clues would seem to fit except in one aspect. And that one clue is the clincher.
I did have a slight issue with the clues in this one. Unlike her other mysteries, these hints were somewhat more random. The reasoning still added up, but it felt like we were jumping to the conclusion rather than finding the hidden trail.
Poirot would point to a certain piece of evidence and I wouldn't quite know how he found it to begin with. For the most part, I was able to follow, but there were a couple points that I asked "how did he know to look there?" or "what gave him the idea to look for that letter that we didn't know existed?" Obviously mysteries have to have some level of confusion, but all of her later books seemed to make sense at the end, which I didn't think this one did as well.
And that's where this author still had room to grow. Don't get me wrong, this is a grade-A mystery that really did set the stage for mysteries to come. The opening act of the greatest show is still great - but it's not the best of it. From this point, Christie's characters would only get more complex and her plots thicken to keep the audience stewing in intrigue. And it's only uphill for Agatha's career from here.
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