This is by Agatha Christie (1890-1976), and it was published in 1920.

It's notable for a couple of things:

1. It was Christie's first mystery novel, and the first to feature Hercule Poirot. Here's the opening description, provided by Hastings, the narrator, who already knows the great detective from his time in Belgium: "Poirot was an extraordinary-looking man. He was hardly more than five feet four inches, but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, but he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandified little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police. As a detective, his flair had been extraordinary, and he had achieved triumphs by unravelling some of the most baffling cases of the day."

The Poirot we see in this text is a more emotional, more compassionate, less arrogant figure than the one we've grown used to.

Hastings himself is also an interesting character. Poirot's Watson-reminiscent straight man, his main job is to point to the prowess of the detective, and provide a foil to his intelligence by blundering around himself. So poor Hastings gets the wrong end of every stick; lets himself be unduly influenced by a pretty woman or a loyal servant; and always proves a little quick to fancy himself slighted. But he does provide assistance, almost in spite of himself, and his heart is in the right place. He's obviously useful enough to follow Poirot into several subsequent novels. And he provides the springboard for lots of gentle humour. Example, opening with a remark by Poirot:

"'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."


Quite a reasonable cover

2. Christie began writing this novel in 1916, and so there are a number of features that reflect the war-time era. True, at quiet Styles Court, "it seemed almost impossible to believe that, not so very far away, a great war was running its appointed course." But Hercule Poirot arrives as a refugee from Belgium, sponsored by Emily Inglethorpe (the mistress of Styles, who rapidly becomes our murder victim). Hastings has been invalided from the front, and is still convalescing (a situation reminiscent of A Month in the Country and Mrs Dalloway). John Cavendish, Emily's stepson, drills with the volunteers, and helps out at the local farms. His wife, Mary, works "on the land", getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning to milk, and sticking at her agricultural chores till lunchtime. There's rationing, and a potential spy stalks the pages (why are we not surprised at that...?) And Cynthia (a protegee of Mrs Inglethorpe's) works at the Red Cross Hospital, seven miles away.

This latter character mirrors Christie's own experience. During WWI, when her husband was fighting in France, she worked for the Voluntary Aid Detachment of the Red Cross, and her time in their dispensaries allowed her to become familiar with various medicines and poisons. She was a fan of the mystery novels of Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan Doyle, and she fed that interest with her recently acquired medical knowledge, and with her experience of the Belgian refugees living in Torquay and the Belgian soldiers she helped to treat. Write what you know -- that's what they say, isn't it?

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According to the jacket text of the first edition, Christie made a bet that she could "write a detective novel in which the reader would be unable to spot the murderer, despite being given exactly the same clues as the detective". In the event, it's quite an audacious trick she pulls off (and I certainly didn't guess the double-bluff denouement). It's far-fetched, of course, and crazily convoluted. But it's a good read. The solution is ingenious; the action is animated by interesting characters, concerning whom Christie persistently leads you down various garden paths; there are all sorts of tense relationships playing out at Styles when Hastings arrives; there's a big, set-piece reveal-all; and well, we all like a mystery in an old English country house...


Who can resist?

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Of course, it's all even better if you savour it concurrently in two languages... A couple of years ago, I did a translation comparison of Murder on the Orient Express (with Italian as my lead text, and Russian and Turkish as the subsidiary languages-in-training). This was fun (and, yes, I realize my ideas of fun might not be everyone's...).

I recently realized that I had access to the Indonesian and Russian versions of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and decided I'd do a similar thing -- albeit in much less detail -- with those.


The cover of the Russian version, which is also nicely restrained


The Indonesian version has a somewhat lurid jacket...

I can read an Agatha Christie in Indonesian pretty easily, so that was my lead text this time. Russian I really cannot yet read with any fluency... Despite the fact that it has been a long-held ambition of mine to be able to consume at least simple novels in Russian, I have put absolutely no effort into achieving this goal. So my Russian reading abilities have advanced not one jot since that comparison reading I did three years ago. Never mind. This was still an instructive exercise.

Things to note:

1. The typeface really matters in Russian... I found the text of the last one MUCH easier to decipher than the rather closer-set print I had this time.

2. I hit on a way of reading in tandem that wasn't too time-consuming: A) Read the Indonesian first. B) Highlight any bits that are particularly relevant either from a narrative or a linguistic point of view. C) Find the equivalent sentences in Russian. D) Transcribe them.

3. Why transcribe? Well, because as I'm transcribing, letter by letter, I realize that I DO in fact know words that I'd thought were unfamiliar when I'd skimmed over them first time round. So the lesson in that is to read more slowly... When you're learning to read other languages, the best advice is usually to speed up, because if you go too slowly, you never quite get into the flow of the text, and start to swim along with it. But in Russian, with its different alphabet, it seems the opposite is true.

4. I couldn't find a free audio-text in Russian, but listening would have worked well too.


The plan of the house

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I won't go into detail about the translations this time, although I did notice quite a few discrepancies on my way through. Most don't matter, but it's a bit unfortunate that "he's a Polish Jew" becomes "he's a Jewish policeman" in the Indonesian version. Likewise, where the Russian has "women do important work these days" (a direct translation from the English), the Indonesian loses something with "women today are very advanced".

And -- unaccountably -- there's a whole chunk missing at the end of Chapter X in the Indonesian text. This is where John Cavendish is arrested, so it's not exactly peripheral information. In this version, Chapter XI opens with the announcement that the trial of John Cavendish for the murder of his stepmother took place two months later, and you're left to figure the rest out for yourself... It's all there in the Russian version (which is generally much more faithful to the original, and includes -- as I found last time -- lots of notes explaining things that might be puzzling to the reader).

Occasionally, there's a translation that's plain misleading. There's a sentence that's rendered in Russian like this: "How could one hope for Mary's happiness if John were not acquitted?" This is a very close rendering of the English original, which I looked up just to check: "What happiness could there be for Mary, if John were not acquitted?" The Indonesian, however, comes up with: "I know that Mary would not be happy if John were released" -- which is actually the direct opposite of what it should be.

All in all, the Russian version seemed better than the Indonesian, but I know nothing of the timeframes and budgets involved, so I probably shouldn't judge.


The letter with the give-away dodgy date, reproduced in English with the translation in a footnote

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By way of a chaser, I listened to Anna Lea's Audible Original adaptation of The Mysterious Affair at Styles. There were some pretty big names in the cast (not that I was familiar with many of them), and I thought the whole thing was really well done. It also stuck pretty closely to the book -- although it wasn't totally obvious why Alfred Inglethorpe, the murdered woman's second husband, had to become American...

I loved the music (by Johnny Flynn). There's a wonderful anchor theme that's rumba-inspired but somehow mournful, and the courtroom music was solemn and a little spooky. Listen right to the end because there you'll find a spine-tingling rendition of Keep the Home Fires Burning.

Anyway, this was an enjoyable read/listen, and a stimulating little intellectual exercise. Must repeat.