The Mysterious Affair at Styles

By: Agatha Christie

Narrated by: Hugh Fraser

Celebrating 100 years of Agatha Christie stories, The Mysterious Affair at Styles is Hercule Poirot’s first case, performed on audio by Captain Hastings actor Hugh Fraser.

‘Beware! Peril to the detective who says: “It is so small – it does not matter…” Everything matters.’

After the Great War, life can never be the same again. Wounds need healing, and the horror of violent death banished into memory.

Captain Arthur Hastings is invited to the rolling country estate of Styles to recuperate from injuries sustained at the Front. It is the last place he expects to encounter murder. Fortunately he knows a former detective, a Belgian refugee, who has grown bored of retirement…

©1920 Agatha Christie; (P)2003 HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, London UK

Critic reviews

"Almost too ingenious...very clearly and brightly told. (Times Literary Supplement

You think you know, and then you don’t, and then you think you know again

This was a thrilling tail of a wannabe detective and detective Poirot himself. I think it is hilarious that Mr. Hastings wants to be a detective and yet when his friend ask him to ponder things he has seen in order to find his own conclusions, he cannot. You think the answer is obvious, but the detective makes you question yourself every turn. The smallest of things he sees and they lead to these big discoveries. I myself have read three other Poirot stories, and I always think to myself look at all the small details because those are the ones that will crack the case. I still have not been able. To come to the right conclusion. But I always find those are the best type of mystery novels. I want to be shocked in the end. I want to have not been anywhere close to the actual murderer.