For the past several weeks, our weekly trips into the Classic Mysteries vault have been taken on our variant of a "wayback machine." Sometimes, it can be fun to look back at the early works that helped define the genre and the authors who wrote those works as well. Consider the case of Agatha Christie, still wildly popular (and, in my opinion, deservedly so). So this week, let's talk about Christie's mystery debut, the first appearance of Hercule Poirot in The Mysterious Affair at Styles. This is a slightly edited transcript of the audio review I did of this book on the Classic Mysteries podcast about eight years ago:
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A British army officer, sent home with injuries from the front near the end of the “Great War” – the one we now call World War I – winds up spending his leave time at a country estate called Styles. As a result, he happens to be on hand when the owner of the estate, an elderly woman, is murdered. Fortunately, an old friend is also on hand – a friend with a background as a retired police detective. That friend is a little Belgian named Poirot. Hercule Poirot. And – with the help of his good friend Arthur Hastings – Poirot will spoil the nearly perfect murder plotted by the villain in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the first mystery written by Agatha Christie.
The world was little prepared for the kind of impact that small, rather dandified Belgian detective would make on the literature of crime fiction. In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, first published in 1920, Agatha Christie describes her detective this way:
Poirot was an extraordinary looking little man. He was hardly more than five feet four inches, but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible. I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound.
That may not sound like a very promising description of a detective. But Poirot throughout his career was quite happy for his adversaries to underestimate his abilities. And that is quite in evidence in The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
The woman who owns the estate of Styles is a benefactor to Poirot and other Belgian war refugees. So when the old woman is murdered, Poirot is more than willing to become involved in trying to solve the case. He is brought into the house by his old friend, Captain Arthur Hastings. And I really must stop and say a few words about Hastings at this point.
Very often, in detective stories, particularly those in the classic tradition, the narrator of the story is seen as being not particularly bright. By filtering the events of the story through the eyes of a narrator who misinterprets those events, the author frequently can mislead the reader fairly and quite thoroughly.
In Captain Hastings, we have this tendency carried to extremes. In The Mysterious Affair at Styles and in many other Poirot novels narrated by Hastings, the reader can be absolutely dead-certain that any theories put forth by Hastings will be wildly incorrect. But it would be a mistake to read that as an indictment of Christie. Poirot frequently says – as he does in The Mysterious Affair at Styles – that he relies on Hastings to provide unexpected insights and clues. And, accordingly, Christie herself appears to have a good deal of fun with the relationship between Poirot and Hastings – and the astonishing lack of self-awareness possessed by the latter. Consider a brief scene, where Poirot is trying to outline his plans to Hastings. Talking about the murderer, Poirot remarks:
"He is intelligent. But we must be more intelligent. We must be so intelligent that he does not suspect us of being intelligent at all."
I acquiesced.
“There, mon ami, you will be of great assistance to me.”
I was pleased with the compliment. There had been times when I hardly thought that Poirot appreciated me at my true worth.
Yes, he continued, staring at me thoughtfully, “you will be invaluable.”
This was naturally gratifying…
I love that passage – as I say, it makes it quite clear that Christie was quite aware of the kind of character she had created in Hastings…and didn’t mind having a little fun at his expense.
At any rate, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was an incredibly sharp first novel for Christie. The mystery itself is beautifully laid out – relying on Christie’s first-hand knowledge of poisons to provide a thoroughly novel and ingenious way of committing murder. The reader – like Hastings – is given all the clues necessary to solve the case…yet, again like Hastings, will almost certainly be misled very cleverly by the author. Critics – particularly modern critics – tend to dismiss Christie as being “just” a clever plotter. It has been observed by others that those criticisms often come from authors who seem to have a great deal of difficultly constructing their own plots. Christie’s ingenuity make her books stand out – even today, nearly a century after The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
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You can listen to the original audio review by clicking here.
Next: The Rubber Band, by Rex Stout
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