This is the book that introduced the world to the eccentric Hercule Poirot. He seems to have been born fully formed with a backstory and everything. He's living in retirement in the English village of Styles for an undisclosed reason for an undisclosed time, but our main character, Arthur Hastings, has already heard of him and knows of all his exploits while on a Belgium police force.
Of course someone must be murdered to be a proper murder mystery. And it's the most obvious murder/suspect of all: A wealthy widows marries a younger, dashing man and is found dead of strychnine poisoning.
But not so fast. What about the stepson in need of money, his distant wife, the other odd stepson, the young and beautiful ward, the strange doctor who is an expert in poisons? No one is who they say they are. Everyone in an Agatha Christie novel has a secret identity and just plain secrets. Poirot and his little gray cells show up to solve a case that, according to him at least, should be obvious.
Spoiler, it's not.
But Christie has introduced the world to an inimitable character and his trusty sidekick, Hastings. Until the day he dies, Hasting, although he doesn't know it yet, will play us, the befuddled audience, in almost all the Poirot novels. We, like Hasting, will struggle to see the "obvious" clues and will provide a fantastic foil to Poirot's brilliance.
The days of murder before DNA and forensics offer a tantalizing view of what a mind, fully concentrated, might be capable of. A mind, that is, written into existence, fully formed, by Agatha Christie.
