The Mysterious Affair at Styles

By: Agatha Christie

Narrated by: Michael Paul

Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

The Mysterious Affair At Styles is Agatha Christie's first ever published novel, and is the first to feature the famously eccentric detective Hercule Poirot, as well as other classic characters including Inspector Japp and Arthur Hastings. The sleuthing team investigates the murder of Emily Inglethorp, a caring woman who opened her home to people resettling after the Giant War. When this mysterious murder strikes Styles, the team must find the assailant before they strike again.

Agatha Christie is the world’s best-selling novelist of all time, and this timeless whodunnit proves her well-deserved reputation as The Queen of Mystery. Filled with suspenseful plot twists and viable suspects ranging from the victim’s much younger husband to her resentful step-sons, one ultimate question remains...who killed Emily Inglethorp?

Public Domain (P)2023 Virginia Bridge

Great mystery, but….

Who here has not read this title? Any mystery reader worth his salt has read at least a couple Christie novels, so this review will concentrate on the performance. For the most part, it’s good. The narrator has an excellent voice for Hastings. My problem is that he’s not good for the man himself, Hercule Poirot. He seems to feel that a faster pace is good enough to separate the rest of the characters from the detective. Poirot deserves more. More inflection, more feeling, more everything. It’s hard to pull off, so it’s understandable. Otherwise, it’s an excellent reading of an even more excellent mystery. Michael Paul seems to enjoy the story, so the few problems I had are able to be overlooked.

Always a great story

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie is a classic. The narration by Michael Paul was very good.

Great Narration!

I've always enjoyed reading Agatha Christie's books and watching the movies and TV shows created from her stories. This was a fun listen! The narrator does a fantastic job bringing the characters to life!

The beginning of a great series

The narration was fairly standard for a who done it mystery. Additionally, the story itself was also basic considering the series as a whole; although that probably should have been expected given that this is where Christie introduces her famous Belgium detective who was quite obviously developed in the tradition of another famous detective … Sherlock Holmes … with perhaps more eccentricities without any apparent connection to the reason he was so successful as a detective.

In this story, we get Poirot working through what was an apparent murder by poison where he keeps everyone, including the reader (and even his companion Hastings), in the dark as to what he is doing and what he is thinking … going so far as to intentionally allow his companions to come to erroneous conclusions without correction until we get to the final reveal at the end where Poirot shows us all how clever he is. Despite the red herrings and shadows, I thought the story to be quite smart, interesting and entertaining in a genre I typically always enjoy when done intelligently … which this was. While perhaps not the best of the series, it is still worth the read ...

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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