Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles Isn't All That Mysterious

As cliched as it sounds, I want to be a writer--specifically, a kind of mystery/suspense/thriller/contemporary fiction with a dash a mystery and the supernatural writer. To that end, I spend a lot of time reading. I read poetry, Renaissance plays, Christian philosophy, the Bible, classic literature from the Victorian, Neo-Classical, Romantic and Realist periods, all the way up to the early twentieth century, Modern and Post-Modern literature. However, what I still love the most, from a recreational standpoint, are mysteries. I have read the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle--two writers who are considered the father and the master of the modern detective story. I have read more recent mystery writers like Margaret Coel, and over twenty books of my favorite modern mystery writer, Tony Hillerman. However, it wasn't until recently that I had kicked myself for not reading anything from the writer who has been given the title, The Queen of Mystery." Therefore, I have recently delved (finally) into the world of Agatha Christie. Last Halloween, I read one of Christie's last books, Halloween Party. Needless to say, I was impressed. The simplified settings and litany of characters made the mystery difficult to solve. I was also interested in her almost casual view of murder, in that the characters seem to view it as an unsurprising way of life, and this callous and cold view of reality clashed interestingly with the light-heartedness of the Halloween festivities that took place in the first few chapters. Having read--and been impressed with--one of Christie's last novels, I wanted to compare it to her earlier novels. So, I read her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Here is a brief synopsis of the gist of the plot, with pretty much no spoliers:

We are introduced to almost every principal and less-important characters in the novel. We meet all our suspects via a meeting at the estate of "Styles." We learn later that the Ladyship of the estate, Lady Cavendisjh has remarried, and her sons John and Edward don't like this. Neither do their spouses, and some of the staff whom have been transitioning with this, and the fact that Lady Cavendish is set to marry a man who has intruded upon the scene, Mr. Inglethorpe. Needless to say, the sons don't like the possibility of a new "patriarch" in the family, among other contentious things, and we soon find out later that Lady Canvendish has been poisoned. Poirot is called in to investigate and the story unfolds from there. The premise appears decent enough; however, what disappointed me was the poor characterization, and it subsequently gave the overarching mystery away.

Many of the characters are written in a way that makes them too obvious as to their functionality in the book. The first of these is Evelyn Howard. She is a niece of Lady Cavendish. Her kind of flat character (in a literary sense) makes it too glaringly obvious that she doesn't like one of the characters, and we are immediately supposed to suspect this character. It's meant to be an obvious red herring, but Christie overplays this character's conflict. It comes across as dis-ingenuine, and it immediately makes us think, why is she being so hyperbolic, that is suspicious. Interestingly, Evelyn "discovers" another piece of evidence on this same character, and so we are supposed to suspect him. It is later revealed that another character actually falls in the spotlight concerning this evidence, and then there is a weak twist back to the original suspected murderer. Now, I'm being vague, but the casting of suspicion in this book comes across too heavy-handed, and you can tell that Christie really wants you to suspect certain characters, and some characters are over-characterized, and the subtlety of suspicion and doubt just really isn't there. The characterization of almost every dramatis personae sort of tells/shows how they are functioning in the story, and it's fairly obvious who the suspect or suspects are early on.

Another flat character who is considered one of the suspects is characterized as nervous, sad, and withdrawn. Although the death of Lady Canvendish affects his situation dramatically, it is later revealed that his suspicious behavior is all meant to be from the worry brought on by his "infatuation" (my words, not Christie's) with one of the other non-potential suspects. I found this pretty weak, given this suspected-character's position in regard to the victim, who is actually his mother. His motivations, and the reasons he is suspected, are too obvious and very weak, making him a very, very poor red herring.

Another problem was the lack of presence of the protagonist. The main character, Poroit, simply seems a bit overly-absent from the investigation at times. There are times when he "disappears" to do some side investigating, and we aren't following him as readers, and then it's later revealed that he was "doing this or that" and discovered some clue ahead of time and suspected this person and that that the readers are only told about when Poroit wants to reveal it to us. I don't really like this way of mystery writing because it doesn't allow the reader to look at the same evidence the detective has, and therefore, I am less likely to just take it at face value that this is what happened, and that I should just take that as given, if that makes sense. As a reader, I want to be privy to all of the evidence too (whether I interpret it the way I should or not), and Christie doesn't afford us that opportunity on some of the critical "clues," and that was disappointing.

At the end of the day, I was hoping for a bit more elaborateness like the previous novel, but I knew this was her first novel as well, so it was comforting to see the growth of her mystery writing from her first book to one of her last ones. I look forward to reading more of her work.