The Mysterious Affair at Styles (audiobook) by Agatha Christie, narrated by Hugh Fraser

The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a mystery.

I've decided not to include any read-alikes for this.

Review:

This is the first Hercule Poirot mystery. I finished listening to it a few weeks ago and should have reviewed it sooner. I'll do the best I can.

This is set during World War I. Hastings is a wounded soldier visiting a friend in Styles. He thinks he'd make a good detective, and he gets an opportunity to prove that (or not) when Mrs. Inglethorp is found dead, apparently due to strychnine poisoning. Hasting enlists the help of Hercule Poirot, a Belgian refugee who was a famous detective in his home country, and in the end it's mostly Poirot figuring things out while Hastings occasionally assists and desperately tries to figure out what Poirot has deduced but won't tell him.

This was a complicated story made extra confusing by the fact that I couldn't keep any of the characters and their relationships straight. In that respect, this didn't really make for a good work-time audiobook – it needed a little more attention than I could give it. However, the narration was so good that I didn't mind.

I bought this during an Audible sale, not knowing that the narrator, Hugh Fraser, was the same person who played Hastings in the TV series. I remember thinking that the narrator seemed to be channeling TV series Hasting and was doing an excellent job of it, so it was a little embarrassing when I realized who he was.

At any rate, if you liked the TV series, Hugh Fraser's narration will probably appeal to you. Not only will his Hastings sound familiar (ha!), he does a wonderful job of imitating David Suchet's Poirot speech patterns. I need to remember to keep an eye out for Fraser's Poirot narrations in future Audible sales, or maybe even spend one of my precious credits on one.