The Murder at the Vicarage is Agatha Christie’s first mystery to feature the beloved investigator Miss Marple—as a dead body in a clergyman’s study proves to the indomitable sleuth that no place, holy or otherwise, is a sanctuary from homicide.
Miss Marple encounters a compelling murder mystery in the sleepy little village of St. Mary Mead, where under the seemingly peaceful exterior of an English country village lurks intrigue, guilt, deception and death.
Colonel Protheroe, local magistrate and overbearing land-owner is the most detested man in the village. Everyone--even in the vicar--wishes he were dead. And very soon he is--shot in the head in the vicar's own study. Faced with a surfeit of suspects, only the inscrutable Miss Marple can unravel the tangled web of clues that will lead to the unmasking of the killer.
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"This is the first of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple books and what’s interesting is it isn’t told in Ms. Marple’s point of view. It shows Miss “M” through the eyes of the vicar who narrates the novel. He sees her as an interfering busybody, (although the most observant and intelligent of them all) it seems. The police dismiss her theories but Ms. “M” sorts out the clues from the “red herrings” and her mild-mannered way she puts things together in a way that it all makes sense.
The one thing I didn’t really like is that she only showed up intermittently throughout the story, appearing only in a handful of scenes, so it was difficult to get to know her character (this being the first book) and follow her involvement in solving the case. She was portrayed more as just a regular by-stander and nosy neighbor snooping around the village, and not given credit for the “detective” ability she really has. This being her first appearance, Ms. “M” is quite a lot different from Christie’s Hercule Poirot books, in which he could formally get involved in the crime as a detective, working closely with the police force to solve the case. It was a long time before Christie wrote a second Ms. Marple novel and, I think, the character definitely improves from this first book. All in all though, it was Agatha Christie so it was an enjoyable listen.
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Mary (4 out of 5 stars)