Overview

The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a detective novel by British writer Agatha Christie. It was written in the middle of the First World War, in 1916, and first published by John Lane in the United States in October 1920 and in the United Kingdom by The Bodley Head (John Lane's UK company) on 21 January 1921.Styles was Christie's first published novel. It introduced Hercule Poirot, Inspector (later, Chief Inspector) Japp, and Arthur Hastings. Poirot, a Belgian refugee of the Great War, is settling in England near the home of Emily Inglethorp, who helped him to his new life. His friend Hastings arrives as a guest at her home. When the woman is killed, Poirot uses his detective skills to solve the mystery.The book includes maps of the house, the murder scene, and a drawing of a fragment of a will. The true first publication of the novel was as a weekly serial in The Times, including the maps of the house and other illustrations included in the book. This novel was one of the first ten books published by Penguin Books when it began in 1935.This first mystery novel by Agatha Christie was well received by reviewers. An analysis in 1990 was positive about the plot, considered the novel one of the few by Christie that is well-anchored in time and place, a story that knows it describes the end of an era, and mentions that the plot is clever. Christie had not mastered cleverness in her first novel, as too many clues tend to cancel each other out ; this was judged a difficulty which Conan Doyle never satisfactorily overcame, but which Christie would.About iBoo World's Classics: iBoo Press House uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work. We preserve the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. All titles are are unabridged (100% Original content), designed with a nice cover, quality paper and a large font that's easy to read.

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9781641816762

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Reviews

Almost too ingenious...very clearly and brightly told.Times Literary Supplement (London)Altogether a skillfull tale and a talented first book.Daily News (UK)Reading a perfectly plotted Agatha Christie is like crunching into a perfect apple: that pure, crisp, absolute satisfaction.Tana FrenchFuture scholars of the simon-pure detective novel will hold that its greatest practitioner . . . has been Agatha Christie. -The New York Times Book Review gsdf gsd sgdf

Almost too ingenious...very clearly and brightly told. -Times Literary Supplement (London) Altogether a skillfull tale and a talented first book. -Daily News (UK) Reading a perfectly plotted Agatha Christie is like crunching into a perfect apple: that pure, crisp, absolute satisfaction. -Tana French Future scholars of the simon-pure detective novel will hold that its greatest practitioner . . . has been Agatha Christie. -The New York Times Book Review

Author Information

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (15 September 1890 - 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her sixty-six detective novels and fourteen short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play The Mousetrap, performed in the West End from 1952 to 2020, as well as six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for her contribution to literature. Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon, and was largely home-schooled. She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six consecutive rejections, but this changed in 1920 when The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring detective Hercule Poirot, was published. Her first husband was Archibald Christie; they married in 1914 and had one child together before divorcing in 1928. During both the First and Second World Wars, she served in hospital dispensaries, acquiring a thorough knowledge of the poisons which featured in many of her novels, short stories, and plays. Following her marriage to archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930, she spent several months each year on digs in the Middle East, and used her first-hand knowledge of his profession in her fiction. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold over two billion copies. According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author. And Then There Were None is one of the highest selling books of all time, with approximately 100 million sales. Christie's stage play The Mousetrap holds the world record for longest initial run. It opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End on 25 November 1952, and by September 2018 there had been more than 27,500 performances. The play was closed in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award. Later that year, Witness for the Prosecution received an Edgar Award for best play. In 2013, she was voted the best crime writer and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd the best crime novel ever by 600 professional novelists of the Crime Writers' Association. In September 2015, coinciding with her 125th birthday, And Then There Were None was named the World's Favourite Christie in a vote sponsored by the author's estate. Most of Christie's books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games, and graphic novels, and more than thirty feature films have been based on her work.

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