Review: Agatha Christie's "The Mysterious Affair at Styles"

For the first *real* entry in this blog, I figured that I would best start with the first book ever written by one of my favorite authors. Begin at the beginning, so to speak. Thus, this entry will be spent reviewing Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
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I'm not sure what the best way to deal with spoilers is, since I don't have an option to hide text. I suppose I'll just have to avoid directly naming names, perhaps?
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Styles, anyhow, marks the first appearance of Hercule Poirot, every one's favorite Belgian bourgeois private detective with "the little gray cells." (I admit, I am quite fond of Poirot, even when he is at his most ridiculous) It is also the first appearance of Captain Hastings, the lovably dim Watson to Poirot's Holmes, who also serves as our narrator.
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Hastings is off at Styles Court visiting an old chum, John Cavendish, whose wealthy stepmother has recently remarried. And while there seems to be a faint undercurrent of dislike for the old lady--a Lady Bountiful who makes sure everyone knows just who holds the purse strings--there is an even subtler undercurrent of dislike for her new husband. (They are British, after all. They're far too polite to make a fuss of it in public.)
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Unfortunately for Mrs. Inglethorp, it seems that someone couldn't contain their dislike enough to not slip strychnine into her cocoa. Unfortunate for her. Fortunate for the rest of the household: her stepsons John and Lawrence, John's wife Mary, her ward Cynthia, her companion Miss Howard, and of course, her new widower Alfred Inglethorp. After all, there's now plenty of money freed up...
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Luckily, or unluckily, an old acquaintance of Hastings, one M. Hercule Poirot, is staying in the local village, and is willing to take on the case. (It's never entirely explained what Poirot is doing there; Mrs. Inglethorp apparently rented a house for Belgian war refugees, but it's never clear if Poirot himself is a refugee, or simply a visitor. After all, if he's as rich and famous as Christie makes him out to be, couldn't he simply buy his way out of Europe instead of fleeing? Also, Christie never, ever tells us the circumstances of their first meeting. Very interesting, since the stolid, painfully British Hastings and flamboyant Poirot are worlds apart, so to speak, and very unlikely to ever meet in the course of everyday life.)
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The plot is actually the progenitor of (what is now considered) the "cozy" British country manor murder mystery: a sizable number of characters (all of whom either secretly or not-so-secretly turn out to have a motive) are inside an isolated setting, with weapons that would be available to them in their everyday lives or part of the house, and an alibi that is not entirely waterproof.
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The modus operandi, strychnine, is also quite important. Christie loved to write poisonings in her novels. She worked in a pharmacy during her youth, and thus became interested in and knowledgable of different poisons and chemicals. It has been estimated that roughly half of the deaths in her novels involve death by posioning--although not always with such spectacular effects as Mrs Inglethorp's death throes...
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Styles is a good, solid mystery. I especially liked Christie's treatment of the most likely and least likely suspect; another reminder that you can't always take characters' words at face value. It is an excellent first novel, especially since it escapes the fate of some of the later books, where characters' traits become reiterated to the point of stereotype ad nauseum (Poirot's wardrobe fastidiousness, Hasting's gullability towards beautiful women, etc.)
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If you haven't read a Christie before but are meaning to, I highly suggest beginning here. If you have read Christie novels before but never her earlier ones, give this one a try!
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In one sentence: A good, cozy country home murder with a few interesting twists that showcases the budding talents of a newbie crime novelist.
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Good sleuthing!