The Mysterious affair at Styles by Agatha Christie’s starring John Moffat as Poirot
Dramatized by BBC with a whole cast playing different members of the cast so in affect this is not a pure audiobook but an audio play which helps since this is a murder mystery.
Listening length around 2 hours but it seems much less since the Audiobook is a part of a bigger collection of selected stories by Agatha Christie and all these stories feel like short stories which they are actually not!
This is the first book starting Poirot and this I found out while researching for this review! The whole book was initially released as a section in some magazine with a chapter every issue and then made into a book.
This is also the first book with his sidekick of sorts, Colonel Hastings just like Dr Watson!
But this is where the similarity vanishes and Agatha has made a conscious effort to make Poirot and probably Hastings as different from Sherlock and Watson as possible!
In fact in one of the scenes Poirot says, “Sherlock has his violin while I have my balancing cards!”
Though after reading so many novels starring Poirot I do not remember a single novel which talks about his balancing the cards apart from this one!
Another thing is that you cannot read any Sherlock novel which does not have Watson in it which probably may be because he is the narrator but even then Watson is an essential part of Sherlock Holmes story! But most of the popular stories starring Poirot like Murder on the Orient express or Death on the Nile do not have Hastings!
Like I had mentioned before in another review, you can always change Holmes to be rustic or fast or athletic or plain mad (highly functional sociopath is what Benedict’s Sherlock would say!) but Poirot would always be depicted as a short stout man with Polished accent who is in no hurry to get anywhere!
Sherlock has been shown to be brilliant just as Poirot but he may not know the number of planets in the solar system while Poirot is just perfect in every sense at least as far as the brain is concerned!
So finally coming to the story which is the death of a rich widow who had recently married a young man! There is a saying in cop circle that in the case of murder of the wife; it is the husband who is the guilty party and only after you have cleared him is when you look for other suspect!
Here also the suspicion falls very early in the start of the novel without any spoiler on the husband and how Poirot proves or disproves it is the whole story!
A play of his little grey cells and much more!
Every single incident is important and you must keep your ears open and mind fresh to listen to the clue!
You have the weapon of murder as Poison as one of the characters in the story states; that is the weapon of choice of a lady!
You also have twists and turns and lots of surprises in the end!
The way the poison was supposed to be administered reminded me of Salivation of a saint by Kihei Higashino in some way.
The novel setting is where there are lots of rich people with a very rich and affluent person while many stand to gain from her death! This is a common theme in many such novels of those days!
The narration is good and keeps you engaged and the cast has done a stellar job!
Of course like every Poirot mystery you have a meet and greet in the end when Poirot in front of his audience makes his assessment and solves the murder and you will feel, “Oh! How did I not think of it!”
Must read!
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