I’m limping to the finale this year, but since I’ve already hit my goal for number of books read this year so I am fine with this. Since I was participating in NaNoWriMo last month, even though I petered out with about 20,000 words shy of the goal, I didn’t have time for much reading. I did manage read parts of several books, but I only managed to finish one.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Agatha Christie

This is my first encounter with both Hercule Poirot and with Christie. I have to say that I enjoyed it. I don’t have much to say about it, especially since I don’t have a firm footing on either the author or the genre.

Arthur Hastings stays with a friend of his at Styles, his friends step-mother’s home. While staying there he encounters his friend Poirot and just so happens to witness the mysterious death of the step-mother, despite her being in a locked room. With the help of Poirot, though, the case is solved.

My only problem with it is that it is not the facts of the case that are misleading so much as it is Poirot actively lying to his supposed friend the narrator, as well as hiding facts from everyone for spurious reasons. I know that there is a certain amount of deception inherent to the genre, but Poirot hampers his own case by lying to everyone. Mostly it seems because the book would have been only half the length if he just solved the case, he also had to throw in some meddling. Maybe that is Poirot’s thing, but in this one example it was a touch annoying. Still, I did like the book quite a bit.

And that is it for the month. Hopefully next month is a little more productive on this front, but we’ll see.