An Audible Original multi-cast adaptation of Agatha Christie’s debut novel, THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES, starring: Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones) leads an all-star cast as Agatha Christie’s famous detective in his first ever outing, with Himesh Patel (Yesterday) as Captain Hastings. Also starring Harriet Walter (Succession), Jessica Gunning (Baby Reindeer), Phil Dunster (Ted Lasso), Rob Delaney (Catastrophe), John Bradley (Game of Thrones), Vivian Oparah (Rye Lane) and Patsy Ferran (A Streetcar Named Desire).

I’m not normally drawn to full-cast adaptations of books. I prefer to listen to the text version and skip the sound effects. I picked up this adaptation of Christie’s novel because I’ve already read the original (my review is HERE) and because I wanted to see what Peter Dinklage made of Poirot. 

I enjoyed Peter Dinklage’s interpretation of Poirot and Himesh Patel’s version of Hastings. Anna Lea’s adaptation stayed faithful to the original plot and the cast of characters, although the language used, particularly by Hastiings, has been simplified and modernised, losing some of the upper-class formality of the original. Lea’s Hastings would never describe breakfast with the family after the death of the matriarch by saying: “Decorum and good breeding naturally enjoined that our demeanour should be much as usual, yet I could not help wondering if this self-control were really a matter of great difficulty.”, but Lea still found a way of getting Hastings’ message across.

I’ve never liked Poirot much, but I found Peter Dinklage’s Poirot easier to get on with. He was quieter and more patient than the David Suchet version but without losing any of his passion for bringing justice. He doesn’t do the peacock strutting that so irritates me about Poirot. He still makes fun of Hastings’ lack of self-awareness, his weakness for pretty women, and his overestimation of his own analytical abilities, but it’s a quiet amusement that feels born of genuine affection for a good, honest man of limited intellect, rather than a set of put-downs to feed Poirot’s ego.

The adaptation also spends some time establishing Poirot’s immediate history as a refugee fleeing Belgium following the German invasion and Hastings’ trauma as an officer in the trenches, temporarily returned to England to recover from shrapnel injuries. These are things that Christie’s readers, in 1920, would have had a contemporary context for.

Hastings isn’t reduced to a youthful but clownish version of Watson to Poirot’s Holmes. He comes across more as I think Christie saw him: a young Captain of good British stock, seeking solace from the trauma of the war by returning to a place where he’d felt safe as a boy. He does his best to help his friends, but the fact that they are his friends prevents him from seeing them clearly. 

All the cast delivered great performances. The sound effects weren’t intrusive. I could have lived without the music.

I enjoyed this adaptation. It looks as if Peter Dinklage is going to do a series of Poirot books with Audible. I’ve downloaded ‘The ABC Murders’, and I’m hoping he does more.