'Beware! Peril to the detective who says: "It is so small - it does not matter..." Everything matters.' After the Great War, life can never be the same again. Wounds need healing, and the horror of violent death banished into memory.

Captain Arthur Hastings is invited to the rolling country estate of Styles to recuperate from injuries sustained at the Front. It is the last place he expects to encounter murder. Fortunately he knows a former detective, a Belgian refugee, who has grown bored of retirement...

The first Hercule Poirot mystery, now published with a previously deleted chapter and introduced by Agatha Christie expert Dr John Curran.