Review: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've been reading a lot of classic mysteries lately (more than 50, not sure how that happened), and you can only do that for so long without turning to Christie. My grandmother had a collection of Christie books, which I used to read when I stayed with her, but that was many years ago, and I don't remember whether or not I read this one specifically. I've certainly seen the wonderful TV adaptation, and when I read Poirot's dialog, I hear it in my head in the voice of David Suchet. He is Poirot.

Compared with most of her contemporaries, Christie's prose feels smoother, less stiff and more modern, closer to the way people write today than to the Victorian or Edwardian style. She's not the literary stylist that Dorothy L. Sayers is, but her writing is fit for its purpose. She does occasionally commit a comma splice.

She also makes a mystery story feel like a story and not just a puzzle. The characters have more life than a lot of authors of the time manage, and in particular, her detective, Poirot, has an individuality that's missing from a lot of detectives of the era, despite its presence in the great model, Sherlock Holmes. I sometimes say that one of the things I enjoy most about a great mystery story is the parts that aren't the mystery, and Christie provides that: the interpersonal dynamics and the thoughts and feelings of the narrator all seem more developed, more in colour and less in black-and-white, than in a lot of classic mysteries.

Part of it, I suspect, is that Christie, as a woman, was permitted, even expected, to be more comfortable and familiar with emotion and relationships than the male English authors of her time, whose stories often feel like you're watching them through a window of thick glass rather than being in the same room with the characters. I've noticed a similar phenomenon with C.L. Moore in the fantasy and science fiction genre. She, like some other female authors writing at the time, introduces another layer of emotional realism and significance that's missing from most of her male contemporaries, and that we've come to expect in modern fiction.

At the same time, Christie doesn't let us down on the detective-story part. The mystery is intricately constructed and carefully unfolded, just as much as it would be in a book by one of the Freemans (Freeman Wills Crofts or R. Austin Freeman).

Hastings, the Watson character, makes a delightfully dim narrator. Take this passage, for example, where Poirot is speaking to him:

"We must be so intelligent that he does not suspect us of being intelligent at all.”
I acquiesced.
“There, mon ami, you will be of great assistance to me.”
I was pleased with the compliment. There had been times when I hardly thought that Poirot appreciated me at my true worth.
“Yes,” he continued, staring at me thoughtfully, “you will be invaluable.”

The excuse for Hastings' presence in the story is that he's convalescing from an unspecified war wound at the house of an old friend from his childhood, but the wound doesn't seem to trouble him much; he plays tennis, for example, which requires quite a sound body. He's there for a long time, too, and is eventually given a job in the War Office, suggesting that his wound is serious enough not to send him back to the Front (though clearly not so serious that he can't play tennis), or that he brings some kind of ability to the job that is not visible in his assistance of Poirot, or has some sort of influence in high places that he never mentions. It smells strongly of authorial fiat to me, used to ensure that Hastings remains present throughout the whole series of events, but nothing else in the story smells similarly, so I'll let it pass.

He's not referred to as Captain Hastings in this book, even though he's a currently serving officer. It's odd that he gets that title in future books, since he says in this one that he wasn't a professional soldier before the war, and hence technically shouldn't retain his military rank into civilian life, particularly since it's a comparatively low one; it's usually only majors and above who get to keep their rank. According to the Wodehouse annotation site madameulalie.org on their page for Lord Emsworth and Others, "In English literature, former army officers who use the rank of Captain are almost always bounders". Hastings is a strong counter-example; he’s certainly not a bounder, being, in fact, brave, loyal, and scrupulous to a fault (except that in this book he's rather too admiring of his friend's wife).

It's very solid for a first novel, and comparing it to other detective fiction of the time makes it clear to me why Christie is still the most read of all the authors working in this period (though, of course, she did continue writing for many more decades too).

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