Having watched the film adaptations of “Murder on the Orient Express” and “A Haunting in Venice”, I was quite taken by the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and the mysteries he is thrust into. Of course, I had heard of Agatha Christie before, but I just never got around to picking up any of her works. Since it was high time, I started at the beginning, with The Mysterious Affair at Styles - the first book that presented Hercule Poirot to the world in 1920. Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles did not disappoint. It is a murder mystery which does not focus on the murder and all the gory details an atrocious act such as a murder entails, but rather on dissecting clues and observations to piece together a logical chain of events that ultimately leads to the culprit. Mysterious characters, a suspenseful plot, clues and red herrings galore make this a great murder mystery. The story is told from Hastings’s point of view, and since the reader is not privy to Poirot’s thoughts, they get the opportunity to solve the murder on their own. Suffice it to say that the typical revelations of Poirot explaining how the deed was done, and how he reached certain conclusions that led him to identify the perpetrator, caught me off guard. My own conclusions were miles off the mark. After such a promising start into the Hercule Poirot universe, I will be sure to join him in his other adventures.

My first ever Agatha Christie and I will definitely be going to continue reading her work.

Irgendwie war es gut, aber es war so langatmig. Es könnte zum Teil auch an an mir liegen, weil ich überhaupt keinen Durchblick hatte. Aber mein Gefühl sagt mir 2,5 ⭐️ es war nur irgendwie nicht so meins

I can't believe this is Agatha Christie's first published book. It may as well be her tenth, because it's just as brilliant as any of her books. Even though it's Hercule Poirot first novel ever, the reader follows the events through Captain Hastings POV, so it doesn't properly introduce the Belgian detective, because they both already know each other and Capt. Hastings is very well acquainted with Poirot's brilliance. But, by the end of the book, so do we and we're marvelled by it as much as Japp and Hastings and everyone else and we can understand why they were so eloquent throught the book about how amazing Monsieur Poirot was. As I said before, it doesn't seem at all like an author's first novel, because it follows the exact same style as her posterior books and it's in no way inferior to any one of her other works I've read so far, and I read a LOT of them. She never lets the shoe drop, it's amazing! And that's why she remains my favorite author BY FAR and I keep coming back to her novels after a while without picking up one of them.

I rated this book too harshly when I first read it because I found Hastings to be a goof (derogatory). But now I found him a goof (affectionate), and made me appreciate his role as Other to Poirot’s tendency to be Sokrates in this scenario.