In The Mysterious Affair At Styles, Emily Inglethorp dies in her bedroom. Yet her bedroom was locked, and she was killed with strychnine, a fast acting poison. So who could have murdered her, and how? With the aid of his friend Arthur Hastings, Hercule Poirot sets to work, investigating all the clues at hand. There's a locked box securing her legal papers, a container of sleeping powder, and a curious drop of wax on the floor. A small container holds rolled-up used papers, a tiny scrap of green fabric in a doorway, and ashes in the fireplace, one of which is large and unburned enough to suggest that she made a new will before she died. There's so many clues that Poirot's little gray cells have difficulty sorting them all out.
I like how Agatha Christie throws in so many potential clues: they kept me guessing as to the identity of the villain, and how he or she had perpetrated the murder. I guess other readers must have liked that too. The Mysterious Affair At Styles might have been her first novel, but it wowed readers and reviewers alike, and served as the cornerstone on which Agatha Christie would launch her astonishing career. People love a book with a premise that will carry them through a book. Emily Inglethorp's impossible murder, and the relevance of all those clues, kept me turning the pages. As I read, I kept guessing at the identity of the murderer, and how he or she had perpetrated the crime. Given so many clues, I couldn't have sorted out the crime. Nor could Arthur Hastings have inferred the meaning of one crucial piece of evidence. Thankfully, if anyone could discover the murderer of Emily Inglethorp, it's the diminutive Belgian detective Hercule Poirot!
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