The mysterious affair at Styles
The first book by the Queen of Crime and considered the first case of the iconic Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The plot takes place in Stylest Court, a country mansion in a remote location. The narrator is Arthur Rastings, a soldier from the Western Front who, on sick leave, is invited by his childhood friend John Cavendish to spend a season at the mansion. John is married to Cynthia and has a brother named Lawrence Cavendish. Their mother is Mrs. Emily Inglethorp. She had recently married a much younger man, Alfred Inglethorp. Her stepchildren, suspecting that he was interested in their mother's assets, did not like their stepfather. There were still some young women living in the house who received Emily's protection. The lady was poisoned during the night. Everything was a great mystery about her death. Until Rastings offered to help and called a friend of his, Hercule Poirot, to help with the investigation. In this first case, the Belgian already shows himself to be a very perceptive genius in solving crimes. He is a bit strange, clumsy, often eccentric, but he sees what almost no one notices in the investigations. It is quite interesting to observe how Agatha Christie deceives the reader. She misleads us all the time. The most obvious suspect would be Emily's husband, but the author gradually removes elements to make us suspect him. When we are completely unaware, he appears as the guilty party, with Evelyn Howard as his accomplice, who appears in the plot as a close friend of the victim, who was not at the house on the day of the crime and hated Emily's husband, even though the two were partners and plotted against the owner of that mansion, since he was already in the will. Poirot puts the pieces together, finding the way to unravel the mystery and surprising even the authorities, looking for details that no one had noticed. Before becoming a famous and acclaimed writer, Agatha Christie worked with poisons and used this knowledge to come up with an ingenious crime. Taking advantage of the fact that the victim was taking strychnine as a medicine, the executioners applied a new dose, with some compounds, to try to disguise everything. The only thing they didn't count on was Poirot's intelligence, who didn't let the crime go unpunished.