The complete online text of The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie.

Agatha Christie (1890-1976) was the best selling mystery author of all time and the only writer to have created two major detectives, Poirot and Marple. She also wrote the longest-running play in the modern theater, The Mousetrap. The daughter of an Amer...

Agatha Christie is a towering figure in the history of crime literature for two reasons. First, she consolidated the form of the pure mystery novel, achieving in five or six of her books puzzle stories that set a standard unlikely ever to be decisively b...

Agatha Christie is a towering figure in the history of crime literature for two reasons. First, she consolidated the form of the pure mystery novel, achieving in five or six of her books puzzle stories that set a standard unlikely ever to be decisively b...

Agatha Christie wrote her first detective story, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920. Thereafter, and for over half a century, she was the most popular purveyor of the genre. During that time she wrote works that would not fit quite as well within the narrowest definition of the genre. But detective fiction is a form that loses definition in proportion as it extends beyond its intentional narrowness—a truism confirmed by the lasting appeal of even as rudimentary a work as The Mysterious Affair a...

This essay explores how Agatha's Christie's "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" embodies the conventions of crime fiction. Also explores how "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Skull Beneath the Skin" subvert the conventions.