Enter Miss Marple…
😀 😀 😀 😀 😀
Colonel Protheroe is one of those men nobody likes, so when he’s shot dead in the vicar’s study the list of suspects is long. He’s a bullying husband to his second wife, Anne, an overbearing father to Lettice, his daughter, a tough magistrate meting out harsh judgement to the criminal classes of St Mary Mead, antagonistic to anyone whose morals he deems to be lax, and an exacting churchwarden, always on the look out for wrongdoing amongst the church officials and congregation. In fact, it was just earlier that very day that the vicar had remarked that anyone who murdered the colonel would be doing the world a favour!
The police are suitably baffled, but fortunately there’s an old lady in the village, with an observant eye, an ear for gossip, an astute mind and an unerring instinct for recognising evil… Miss Marple! Relying on her lifetime’s store of village parallels, she will sniff out the real guilty party while the police are still chasing wild geese all over the village green…
The narrator in the book is the vicar, Leonard Clement, and he and his younger and rather irreverent wife, Griselda, give the book much of its humour and warmth. It’s Miss Marple’s first appearance and she’s more dithery and less prone to Delphic pronouncements than she becomes in some of the later novels. This is her as I always picture her (I suspect it may have been the first one I read) and is the main reason I never think the actresses who play her do so with quite enough of a fluttery old woman feel to the character. Here, she’s a village gossip who watches the ongoings in the village through her binoculars under the pretence of being an avid bird-watcher, and the Clements joke about her as a nosy busy-body, always prying into the lives of her neighbours. As the book goes on, Leonard finds himself investigating alongside her, and gradually gains an appreciation of the intelligence and strength of character underneath this outward appearance, as does the reader.
Challenge details:
Book: 24
Subject Heading: The Great Detectives
Publication Year: 1930
The plot is very good, with as much emphasis on alibis and timings as on motives. Because Colonel Protheroe was such an unpleasant man, the reader (like the characters) doesn’t have to waste much time grieving for him. The suspects range from the sympathetic to the mysterious, from the wicked to the pitiable, as Christie gradually feeds their motives out to us. She shows the village as a place where no secret can be kept for long from the little army of elderly ladies who fill their lives excitedly gossiping about their neighbours. But while some of them are always getting the wrong end of the stick and spreading false stories, Miss Marple has the insight to see through to the truth. In his The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, Martin Edwards has placed this novel in his The Great Detectives section, and Miss Marple rightly deserves to be there. But he could as easily have put it in his Serpents in Eden category, for its classic portrayal of hidden wickedness beneath the idyllic surface of an English village.

Inspector Slack also makes his first appearance in this book – a dedicated officer, but one who is always jumping to hasty conclusions. He never stops to listen to people properly, and is brash and a bit bullying, and oh, so dismissive of our elderly heroine! A mistake, as he will discover when she reveals all towards the end!
I love this book and have read it about a million times. So it was a real pleasure to listen to the incomparable Joan Hickson’s narration of it this time – I find listening to Christie on audiobook brings back a feeling of freshness even to the ones I know more or less off by heart. Hickson gets the warmth and humour of the books, and gives each character a subtly distinctive voice, though never letting the acting get in the way of the narration. She does the working-class people particularly well, managing to avoid the slight feeling of caricaturing that can come through to modern readers in the books.
Great stuff!
Love this! And I really enjoy the Hickson adaptation too – I’m very fond of Paul Eddington as Clement 🙂
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I love that adaptation too! Her audiobook narrations are sheer joy – between Hickson and Hugh Fraser these Christie audios have become one of my favourite things recently… 😀
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One of my favourite Miss Marple’s. Haven’t listened to the narration but I’m going to give it a go now!
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Me too! I’ve listened to Joan Hickson narrate a few of the Miss Marple books now and she’s such a joy to listen to – hope you manage to get hold of it! 😀
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Got it 😊
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Ooh, hurrah! 😀 I’m 99.999999999999% sure you’ll love it! Let me know… 😀
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Lol, will do 😁
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Who better than Joan Hickson to narrate this one, FictionFan! I’ve always particularly liked the sly wit in the novel, and I agree that the dynamic between the vicar and his wife make the story that much better. Another thing, among many, to like about this is its portrayal of village life. To me, it feels at the same time a salute and a ‘warts and all’s sort of look at that community. Perhaps that’s just my view…
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Absolutely! Joan Hickson for the Miss Marple books and Hugh Fraser for Poirot – sheer joy! I always love the wit in the books and find that quite often the TV adaptations miss that, especially in the Miss Marple ones. And I do think this is the one that gives the best feel for St Mary Mead, maybe because it doesn’t all happen in the manor house…
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I’ve seen the televised versions of this and the other Marple books that I am a bit Marple out but maybe hearing them read would given the new life for me. I must give it a try.
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I’ve read them and seen them so often that I’m the same, and that’s why the audios have been giving me so much pleasure – it makes them feel fresh and new again somehow. Joan Hickson for Miss Marple books and Hugh Fraser for the Poirots – what could be better? 😀
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Great review! I found this book in the free library by my house the other day and I can’t wait to read it!
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Thank you! Hope you enjoy it as much as I do. 😀
Thanks for popping in and commenting. 🙂
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It’s been a while since I’ve read this one, but I know it’s a good one!
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I’ve read my favourites so often I know them off by heart, which is why these audios have been such a find for me – they make them feel all shiny and new again! 😀
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This is the first Miss Marple book that I read ages ago! Yay! So glad that you reviewed this book.
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I can’t be 100% sure, but I think it may have been my first Agatha Christie way back in the dark ages! And I still love it just as much – my love for it has lasted longer than some marriages… 😉
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One of my favorite authors! How did I miss reading this one?? Must make amends … quickly!
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Yes, you must! 😉 This is one of the top five or so that I always recommend to new Christie readers…
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A good old favourite – I feel a reread coming on.
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Never a bad time for a Christie re-read!
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Great review! 🙂
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Thank you! 😀
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Look at all those smiley faces! I haven’t read this Christie but sounds like I really should!
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You should! I guarantee it will give you a smiley face too! (Though hopefully it won’t make you yellow…)
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My goodness. I need to pick up some Christie, I have a few on the shelf waiting for me but not this one. I haven’t read enough of Miss Marple to really appreciate her character. I am sort of team Poirot I guess.
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I love them both, but Miss Marple just has the edge for me, I think. And this or The Moving Finger are the two best Miss Marple books… 😀
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This is one of my favourites too. Time for a re-read 🙂
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There’s nothing more enjoyable than a Christie re-read… not even cake! 😀
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I agree. If someone offered me a choice between an Agatha Christie book or a cake, I’d probably take the book too. (Notice I only said ‘probably’, because the choice might be between a book I don’t love and a cake that I do…)
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Of course, the best solution would be to have both. Plus a little glass of wine…
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Very clever thinking 😉
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Fantastic review, FF! I wonder if I can get this narrator- I’m going to look. It sounds perfect for audio. Love knowing it’s a favorite of yours!
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Thank you! 😀 Oh, I hope you can – she’s perfect for the Miss Marple books. And Hugh Fraser is great for the Poirot ones. Yep, one of my top five, for sure!
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I will keep Fraser in mind too!
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Enjoy! 😀
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Every time you review an Agatha Christie book I am reminded of how much I enjoy her mysteries and that I need to read more of them. I don’t think I’ve read many of the Miss Marple ones though so maybe I should start here… (And is there an alternate pronunciation to the name Lettice that isn’t lettuce? Because if not then I’m going to guess that his daughter murdered him.)
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(Hahaha – sadly it does seem to be pronounced lettuce – it always makes me laugh. Could be worse, I suppose… cabbage?) I love the Miss Marple books and this would be a great one to start with. This and The Moving Finger are the two I love best… 😀
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A true classic! How does Christie make murder such a comfort read? I always loved the fact that Miss Marple and Poirot are both a success because they are treated as invisible by the arrogant people around them. Marple is ignored because she is a little old lady who can’t do any harm while people will tell Poirot any old thing on the basis that as he’s a foreigner, so it doesn’t matter what they say to him. Foolishness that both use to skewer the unwary.
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I know – she really does, and yet her stories are too dark to really be considered cosies. She’s in a class of her own! That’s very true – both of them are made fun of by other characters, too, until they learn better. I love Miss Marple in this one, especially, as seen through Leonard and Griselda’s eyes…
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So good to hear the narration of this one gave it a fresh feeling – I’ve avoided those audio books of these because I am enjoying my re-reads so much but maybe I should give them a go after all.
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I must say I love the Christie audiobooks – I don’t know why, but some styles of books work better for me on audio than others. These and John Wyndham’s books are my current audio faves… 😉
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God Miss Marple is fun, isn’t she? I love when the person murdered is a jerk, it makes the mystery so much more enjoyable 🙂
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Ha – me too! All murder victims should deserve it so we can properly enjoy their murder! 😉 Christie was great at bumping off exactly the right person…
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I really enjoyed this too FF! Fantastic review, you’ve reminded me I have tons of AC’s just waiting to be read on my shelves. 😁
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Thank you! 😀 I’m glad you enjoyed it too. There’s nothing like a nice Agatha Christie for those days when nothing else seems to be working…
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Great review. I love the Miss Marple books, and while this one is not my favourite, I enjoyed it a lot.
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Thank you! 😀 I think it’s the first Agatha Christie I read way back in the Dark Ages, which is probably why I’m still so fond of it, but my overall favourite Miss Marple is The Moving Finger. I love most of them though…
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I don’t remember the first I read but my favourite Marple books are A Murder is Announced and 4:50 From Paddington.
Moving Finger is really good but it didn’t have enough of Miss Marple in it.
In case you’re interested, I did a post on my Marple favourites a few days/weeks? (fairly recently I mean) ago.
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So sorry about the delay in replying – I’ve been on a blog break! I love those ones too, especially A Murder is Announced. Ha – funnily enough I feel she’s not in most of her books! I think I like them because they tend to have different narrators or main characters, and they have a touch more romance than the Poirot books usually… but not too much!
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True- I do enjoy those as well, but sometimes feel (especially Moving Finger) like she just put in Miss Marple at a much later stage- and i wondered why. The ‘hero’ could more or less have sorted out the mystery without her.
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Yes, I sometimes thinks she’s just in them to attract fans – maybe the ones with regular detectives outsold the ones without them. Sometimes her standalones are even better though – And Then There Were None certainly doesn’t suffer for lack of a detective.
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True- I also liked the one in ancient egypt, and Towards Zero and the secret at Chimneys though the later two have Superintendent Battle
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Oh, I haven’t re-read the Egyptian one in years but I remember loving it – must seek it out!
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Me neither- my copy is right in front since I rearranged my shelves a couple of weeks ago.
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My Christie collection is way at the back of my oldest bookcase – not easy to get at! But I must make the effort. 😀
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