"Imagination is a good servant but a bad master".

Arthur Hastings, returning wounded from the front, receives an invitation to Styles Court, the ancestral home of his old friend John Cavendish. The quiet manor seems like an ideal place to spend his convalescent leave. However, this deceptively idyllic environment hides many dark secrets. And when John's stepmother is found dead, all suspicions turn to the family members...

That's when an old acquaintance of Hastings makes his appearance. A cunning, small-statured Belgian retired police officer who loves the rational explanation of mysteries almost as much as his meticulously groomed mustache: Hercule Poirot...

Agatha Christie's first novel - and the first case of her most beloved hero, the legendary Poirot - is presented in its restored form, with the addition of a "lost" chapter, and with an introduction by John Curran, one of the leading scholars of the author's work.