The Mysterious Affair at Styles

First published in 1920, this detective novel is set at Styles Court in Essex during the First World War. Captain Arthur Hastings, home on leave, stays with the Cavendish family; the wealthy stepmother Emily Inglethorp dies of strychnine, and suspicion falls on her new husband, on stepsons John and Lawrence, and on a household that includes a companion and a doctor. Hercule Poirot, a Belgian refugee in the village, examines the coffee, the locked room, and a burnt paper. The book is a country-house poison puzzle, not a war novel.

Bound in brown blocked buckram.