by Agatha Christie
narrated by Hugh Fraser
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Published: 1920
Genre: Mystery
Rating: 4
Hercule Poirot series:
The Mysterious Affair at Styles 1920
Murder on the Links 1923
Christmas Adventure (short story) 1923
Poirot Investigates (short stories) 1924
Poirot's Early Cases (short stories) 1974
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd 1926
The Big Four 1927
The Mystery of the Blue Train 1928
Black Coffee (play novelisation by Charles Osborne) 1997
Peril at End House 1932
The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest (short story) 1932
Second Gong (short story) 1932
Lord Edgware Dies 1933
Murder on the Orient Express 1934
Three Act Tragedy 1935
Death in the Clouds 1935
The ABC Murders 1936
Murder in Mesopotamia 1936
Cards on the Table 1936
Yellow Iris (short story) 1937
Murder in the Mews (four novellas) 1937
Dumb Witness 1937
Death on the Nile 1937
Appointment with Death 1938
Hercule Poirot's Christmas 1938
Sad Cypress 1940
One, Two Buckle my Shoe 1940
Evil Under the Sun 1941
Five Little Pigs 1943
The Hollow 1946
The Labours of Hercules (short stories) 1947
Taken at the Flood 1948
Mrs McGinty's Dead 1952
After the Funeral 1953
Hickory Dickory Dock 1955
Dead Man's Folly 1956
Cat Among the Pigeons 1959
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (short stories) 1960 not published in the USA
The Clocks 1963
Third Girl 1966
Hallowe'en Party 1969
Elephants Can Remember 1972
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case 1975
First sentence(s):
The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as 'The Styles Case' has now somewhat subsided.
The heiress of Styles has been murdered, dying in agony from strychnine slipped into her coffee. And there are plenty who would gain from her death: the financially strapped stepson, the gold digging younger husband, and an embittered daughter-in-law.
Agatha Christie's eccentric and hugely popular detective, Hercule Poirot, was introduced to the world in this book, which launched her career as the most famous and best loved of all mystery writers.
My two-bits:
I've been reading a lot of thriller and mystery related books lately. Also, watched episodes of Hercule Poirot mysteries. AND, am now inspired to finally read/listen to stories from the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie. She has an amazing collection of works. So, I started from the beginning.
While this first story in the Poirot series is the start of it all, it is not an origin story for Poirot. The story jumps right into a mystery which is told from another character's perspective, Hastings, who is a friend of Poirot.
Poirot get pulled into this mystery as a side character doing his own investigations and solving it with the big reveal in a room with the assembled suspects.
* Listened to audiobook version.
