The Mysterious Affair at Styles

**The Novel That Introduced Hercule Poirot**

**Written During the First World War**

**One of Penguin Books' Inaugural Titles in 1935**

**Poirot's Final Case Returns to This Very House**

*A locked room. A poisoned matriarch. A Belgian detective and his little grey cells.*

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Published in 1920, ***The Mysterious Affair at Styles*** marked the debut of Hercule Poirot and, with him, the launch of Agatha Christie's literary career. Set at Styles Court in the English countryside during wartime, the story follows Captain Arthur Hastings, invited to stay with his friend John Cavendish, whose peaceful visit is shattered when the wealthy matriarch Emily Inglethorp is found dead—poisoned with strychnine inside her own locked bedroom.

This is not merely a murder mystery. It is **the blueprint for an entire genre**—the country house, the closed circle of suspects, the red herring planted with surgical precision. Suspicion falls on nearly everyone under Styles' roof, and Poirot's investigation into deception, forged evidence, and concealed relationships is what taught readers how to be deceived properly. **Every clue is real. Almost none of them mean what you think.**

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*"The only fault this story has is that it is almost too ingenious."* *—The Times Literary Supplement*

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The novel's influence extends far beyond its original publication. Poirot would return to Styles Court decades later in *Curtain*, his final case, closing a literary circle that began and ended at the same house. ***The Mysterious Affair at Styles*** has been adapted repeatedly, including ITV's *Agatha Christie's Poirot* (1990) starring **David Suchet**, BBC radio dramas, and a 2024 Audible production featuring **Peter Dinklage** as Poirot. Crime novelist **Robert Barnard** later called it a masterfully clever debut, dense with clues and red herrings—remarkable, he noted, for a first novel from a writer whose skill would only sharpen from there.

*You will suspect nearly everyone in this house at least once.* *Poirot suspected the right person from the very first chapter.*