The Moving Finger

The Moving Finger is technically a Miss Marple mystery, but Jane doesn't show up until the last third of the novel. The main character (and incompetent detective) is Jerry Burton, a pilot who's convalescing after a severe accident. He and his sister have taken a house in a village which is being plagued by poison pen letters. It's the usual Marple-style set-up, only without Aunt Jane. Until, that is, the local solicitor's wife dies suspiciously and suspicion falls upon, well, several people.  Mrs. Dane Calthrop, the vicar's wife, calls her friend Jane who visits, solves the mystery, and leaves with justice served and two couples paired off.  In other words, classic Christie.

Nemesis

I reread Elephants Can Remember shortly after an academic analysis showed that Agatha Christie may have been in the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease when she wrote that memory-dependant novel.  When I reread Nemesis a few weeks ago, I looked for signs that this novel, written a year earlier, showed signs of Dame Agatha's decline.  I'm not an expert, but I don't think it does; Nemesis is much more coherent than its successor.  I don't however,  have a program to analyze the complexity of the language so I may have passed more subtle signs.

Nemesis begins in the comfortable confines of St. Mary Mead where Jane Marple is perusing the obituaries while drinking her morning tea.  As usual, she sees a familiar name, but it's not an old school friend.  The name she sees is Rafiel - the same Mr. Rafiel she'd met on a Caribbean vacation a few years earlier.  A few days later, Mr. Rafiel's attorneys tell Miss Marple that she's been given a bequest by the estate.  It's not money, exactly, but a tour of famous gardens.  Oh, and while she's on tour, can she also solve the murder for which Mr. Rafiel's son was unjustly convicted?  Of course Miss Marple's basic understanding of human nature (along with a few convent coincidences) frees young Mr. Rafiel from Dartmoor and brings the real murder to justice.  There's a reason why Christie's books are considered "cozy" - they're the literary equivalent of a good cup of tea.  Warm, comforting, and often a bit more complex than they're given credit for being.

The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

Warning - spoilers

It's been a rough few weeks, so I pulled another frequently read Christie off the shelf.  I don't read The Mirror' Crack'd from Side to Side as often as, say Sparkling Cyanide, but I've read it often enough to nod familiarly at several passages.

The 1960s have come to St. Mary Mead, bringing a suburban development and a supermarket to the edge of the quiet village.  They've also brought frailty to Jane Marple, and the indignity of a paid companion who believes that mental decline accompanies (or precedes) physical decline.  Needless to say, Miss Marple is much sharper mentally than the clucking Miss Knight, and manages to slip away from the younger woman's smothering attention for a brisk walk through The Development.  She's busy confirming her view that human nature doesn't change - those tough-looking boys are posing and will grow up to be steady young men; that young woman cannot trust her fiancé - when she trips over a rough piece of pavement and is "rescued" by Heather Badcock.  We've all known a Mrs. Badcock - she's always the first to volunteer for a committee, works tirelessly, and annoys the world with her generosity.  Kind-hearted but so single-minded that she cannot see whether her help is needed (or wanted), she "comforts" Miss Marple with a cup of over-sweetened tea and the somewhat rambling story of how she left her sickbed, slathered on makeup, and met her favorite star (and current resident of Gossington Hall), Marina Gregg.

A few weeks later, Heather meets Marina again, launches into the story of their prior meeting, and then dies after drinking a daiquiri meant for Marina.  Luckily, the detective sent by Scotland Yard knows Miss Marple and keeps her appraised of the investigation.  No one can see either motive or opportunity for the attempt on Marina's life, or a source for the threatening letters which follow.  And yet, there must be a plot because two murders (of the butler and of Jason Rudd's secretary) follow. Miss Marple puts together Heather's illness, Marina's frozen look, and an indeterminate pronoun and realizes that Heather was the intended victim.  When they'd met a dozen or so years earlier, Marina had been pregnant and Heather ill with rubella.  Marina had contracted the illness, and the subsequent damage to her child had led to a breakdown from which he had never fully recovered.  Since the debut of Sherlock, I've looked at Christie's novels with an eye towards modern-day adaptations.  Sadly, with the rise of the anti-vaccination movement, I can see The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side fitting into the 21st Century quite well.

The Murder at the Vicarage

I first read The Murder at the Vicarage 30 or so years ago, but I don't think I've read it since.  It's been 28 years since I saw a high school production of the play.  As with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, I remembered only bits of the story but the memories that came back were more personal than plot related.  I remember the pink blood on the "victim's" white shirt and joking with my friends Michelle and Vicky (the stage managers for the show) afterwards, even what I was wearing.  I don't remember the plot.

Maybe it's because the plot is more mechanical than distinctive.  Someone calls vicar Leonard Clement away on a fake call for last rites; he returns home to find Colonel Protheroe dead in the vicarage study.  There are half a dozen or so likely suspects (including the vicar who'd tactlessly expressed how little his overbearing parishioner would be missed after death), and of course those with the strongest motives have the strongest alibis.  Those alibis are no match for Miss Marple's logic, though.  She's actually a minor character (the book is written from the vicar's POV), the most self-aware of a Greek chorus of gossipy old ladies who annoy the vicar's much younger wife.  In her first outing, she's not quite the sweet natured old lady who sees parallels between every crime, big or small, and a long-ago event in St. Mary Mead.  She's a bit cattier, and rather than solving the mystery on her own, she directs the vicar towards the solution.  I recently read Christie's autobiography and she claims that The Murder at the Vicarage had "too much plot."  She's right, but it's still a worthy introduction for the iconic character.

The Body in the Library

I don't believe in conspiracy theories. It's not because I'm particularly cynical (or at least I don't think that's the reason), or because I was a scientist before I went to law school, but because I don't think the average person or group of people can pull it off. Most people aren't smart enough to develop the plan and the rest are usually too confident in their plan (or arrogant) to bother with trouble shooting. So the plan fails - some minor detail seems 'off' to an uninterested observer and the elaborate plot comes crashing down.

I'm in the minority, though, and maybe it's because I've read so many Miss Marple books. The fluffy-bunny spinster has one of the most finely tuned BS detectors in fiction. She picks up minor non-verbal cues and inconsistencies, and wraps them in seemingly inconsequential stories of people who've lived in St. Mary Mead. I can see her today, gently pointing out the flaws in some of the crazier theories that bounce around the internet and shocking the younger, more 'aware' people around her when her assertions turn out to be true.

The Body in the Library is Miss Marple's second full length novel and her third appearance (she debuted in the short story collection The Tuesday Club Murders), and while she's a bit softer than she was in those books, she's still a bit of a sharp-tongued gossip rather than the 'sweet aunt Jane' we meet in later volumes. One morning, a maid wakes Miss Marple's friend Mrs. Bantry from an early morning dream to announce, "There's a body in the library!" Naturally, she sends her husband to investigate and yes, there's the body of a heavily made-up girl in a satin dress, lying on the hearthrug. The girl turns out to be a dancer at a near-by resort, not a 'lady' but coincidentally about to be adopted by Conway Jefferson, a wealthy friend of the Bantrys.

Mr. Jefferson's widowed daughter-in-law and son-in-law are the natural suspects, as are a movie studio employee who's recently relocated to St. Mary Mead, a rather stupid young man staying at the resort, and the resort's dance and tennis instructor. Add in a missing Girl Guide, a few careless comments about teeth and nails, and Miss Marple not only solves the crime but points out how and why the criminal tried to frame one suspect who, in a panic, threw suspicion onto the Bantrys. It's simple common sense, something distinctly lacking in today's world.