The Mysterious Affair at Styles — The Companion Edition (eBook)

Before Poirot was a legend, he was a refugee nobody in the village could pronounce — and this is where he starts.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) is Agatha Christie's first novel and Hercule Poirot's first case: Emily Inglethorp, mistress of Styles Court in wartime Essex, dies of strychnine in a room bolted from the inside, and the Belgian ex-policeman the village has taken in as a charity case sets about the locked doors, the tonic bottle, and the timetable. This Companion Classics edition prints the complete 1920 American text, taken from Project Gutenberg and collated against photographic scans of the early American and British printings — nine readings restored where the file departs from both, and the book's four original illustrations (the plan of the first floor of Styles, the plan of the victim's bedroom, the will fragment, and the famous "possessed" envelope) reproduced at their original positions.

Inside: an introduction on the bet that started Christie, the book she wrote in a dispensary, and the £25 legend that isn't true; a Who's Who of Styles Court; five explainers (strychnine as the novel presents it; wartime Essex and the Belgian refugees; the country-house mystery being invented; Christie's pharmacy war; the manuscript's rejections and hard bargain); a short life of Agatha Christie; an honest note on the period text; an appendix on the floor-plan tradition this book founded; and discussion questions for every chapter plus a whole-book set.

The novel's text is public domain in the United States (Agatha Christie died in 1976, so it remains in copyright in life-plus-seventy countries). All companion material is original to this edition. A printable Book Club Kit is available in this store.