Review: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

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

January 1, 1980

Oh, my I loved me some Christie back in the day. The details of plot are entirely lost in my mind. Two things stick with me: a world of adults without kids, and Hastings affection for auburn hair.

***
I'd been vaguely wanting to re-read this for a while. And then we were stranded on vacation without wifi (I know, right?), and Veronica didn't have anything on her Kindle she wanted to read, and she couldn't get anything new, so she and I swapped Kindles until we could get us some internet.

My daughter does not download everything on the planet. There wasn't anything I hadn't already read, but there was a complete works of Agatha Christie Volume I. Thirty three years ago, when I first read this, I didn't know it was Christie's first published novel. Nor had I recalled that it was a locked-room mystery. Nor that Hastings was so very dim; I'd thought of him as at least reasonably bright, like Dr. Watson.

Anyway. This isn't my favorite Christie, And Then There Were None is, but WOW, this really is the quintessence of country-house murder mysteries. It's got the Edwardian aristocracy, the obsession with alibis, the cast full of dubious characters with hidden motives. Really, the only thing it is missing is an obsession with train schedules. Classic.

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