The Mirror Crack'd - Agatha Christie [95]
Daily Mirror: ‘The plots are so good that one marvels…Most of them would have made a full-length thriller.’
3. The Body in the Library (1942)
The very-respectable Colonel and Mrs Bantry have awakened to discover the body of a young woman in their library. She is wearing evening dress and heavy make-up, which is now smeared across her cold cheeks. But who is she? How did she get there? And what is her connection with another dead girl, whose charred remains are later discovered in an abandoned quarry? The Bantrys turn to Miss Marple to solve the mystery.
Of note: Many of the residents of St. Mary Mead, who appeared in the first full-length Miss Marple mystery twelve years earlier, The Murder at the Vicarage, return in The Body in the Library. Mrs Christie wrote Body simultaneously with the Tommy and Tuppence Beresford spy thriller N or M?, alternating between the two novels to keep herself, as she put it, ‘fresh at task.’
The Times Literary Supplement wrote of this second Marple novel: ‘It is hard not to be impressed.’
4. The Moving Finger (1943)
Lymstock is a town with more than its share of shameful secrets — a town where even a sudden outbreak of anonymous hate-mail causes only a minor stir. But all of that changes when one of the recipients, Mrs Symmington, appears to have been driven to suicide. ‘I can’t go on,’ her final note reads. Only Miss Marple questions the coroner’s verdict. Was this the work of a poison pen? Or of a poisoner?
Of note: The Moving Finger was a favourite of its author. From An Autobiography (1977): ‘I find that…I am really pleased with…The Moving Finger. It is a great test to reread what one has written some seventeen or eighteen years before. One’s view changes. Some do not stand the test of time, others do.’
The Times: ‘Beyond all doubt the puzzle in The Moving Finger is fit for the experts.’
5. A Murder Is Announced (1950)
The invitation spelled it out quite clearly: ‘A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks, at 6:30 p.m.’ Everyone in town expected a simple party game — a secret ‘murderer’ is chosen, the lights go out, the ‘victim’ falls, and the players guess ‘whodunit.’ Amusing, indeed — until a real corpse is discovered. A game as murderous as this requires the most brilliant player of all: Jane Marple.
Robert Barnard: ‘As good as Agatha Christie ever wrote.’
A.A. Milne: ‘Establishes firmly her claim to the throne of detection. The plot is as ingenious as ever…the dialogue both wise and witty; while the suspense is maintained very skillfully…’
The New York Times Book Review: ‘A super-smooth Christie…neat murders in an English village…an assortment of her famous red herrings, all beautifully marinated.’
6. They Do It with Mirrors (1952)
A sense of danger pervades the rambling Victorian mansion in which Jane Marple’s friend Carrie Louise lives — and not only because the building doubles as a rehabilitation centre for criminal youths. One inmate attempts, and fails, to shoot dead the administrator. But simultaneously, in another part of the building, a mysterious visitor is less lucky. Miss Marple must employ all her cunning to solve the riddle of the stranger’s visit, and his murder — while protecting her friend from a similarly dreadful fate.
Guardian: ‘Brilliant.’
The New York Times: ‘No one on either side of the Atlantic does it better.’
7. A Pocket Full of Rye (1953)
Rex Fortescue, king of a financial empire, was sipping tea in his ‘counting house’ when he suffered an agonising and sudden death. The only clue to his murder: ‘loose grain’ found in his pocket. The murder seems without rhyme or reason — until shrewd Jane Marple recalls that delightful nursery rhyme, ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence.’ A playful hint indeed for a murder that is anything but child’s play.
Times Literary Supplement: