The Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple)

Product Information

At the other end of Lansham Road, a small lane called Old Pasture Lane broke away from the main street. Nestled in this lane were three Queen Anne or Georgian houses, which belonged to three spinsters. The first house belonged to the long-nosed, gushing and excitable Miss Caroline Wetherby. The second was Miss Amanda Hartnell, a proud, decent woman with a deep voice. The last cottage was called Danemead Cottage and belonged to Miss Jane Marple, the famous spinster who solved countless cases between 1930 and 1976. The Post Office, and the dressmaker's shop belonging to Mrs Politt, are located in front of the lane. No one was fooling Miss Marple though, but she kept her suspicions very close to her chest and did not declare them until every fact had fallen into place. She was a pleasure to watch as she let people assume she was a foolish old woman while actually pegging everyone's characters and behaviours very accurately. Very little gets past her! In 2022, William Morrow released new editions for the entire Miss Marple series. Each one features a beautiful floral design matched with stunning color combinations. I really enjoyed the mystery of this. It was completely engaging from the start. The murdered man, one Colonel Protheroe, was a bit of curmudgeon. He was a Judge and definitely had more enemies than friends. Even the Vicar had a cross word for him a time or two. H.C. O'Neill in The Observer of December 12, 1930 said that, "here is a straightforward story which very pleasantly draws a number of red herrings across the docile reader's path. There is a distinct originality in her new expedient for keeping the secret. She discloses it at the outset, turns it inside out, apparently proves that the solution cannot be true, and so produces an atmosphere of bewilderment."

At the onset, the story held my interest. I generally enjoyed the presentation of the incidents and characters in a tightly woven plotline. There is a fair amount of suspense from the point of murder that takes place at the Vicarage. Incident characters and events served as red herrings so the reader wouldn't guess the criminal before being revealed. All was good until I got to the end. With many twists and turns, the truth when revealed was quite the ordinary. I guessed it way before and was quite firm on my conviction until the author quite deliberately created confusion. That's what I call cheating. :)

Cast & Crew

The book was adapted for radio by Michael Bakewell, with June Whitfield as Miss Marple, Francis Matthews as the Rev. Leonard Clement, and Imelda Staunton as Griselda Clement. This adaptation was first broadcast by the BBC in 1993. What the two who planned it also planned to use Jane Marple as an alibi witness as they know she's outside tending her garden at the time planned. Murder at the Vicarage, a 1930 detective novel by legendary mystery writer Agatha Christie, concerns the murder of Colonel Lucius Protheroe, a man so despised that multiple people confess to the crime after the fact. The novel stars the elderly spinster detective Miss Marple in her first of many appearances in Christie's collection of mysteries.

Agatha ha vuelto a jugar conmigo y me vio todita la cara de tonto. Y eso no me fastidia, claramente me fascina. Lo que necesitan es un poco de inmoralidad en sus vidas. Entonces no estarían tan ocupados buscándola en las de otras personas."

See also

H.C. O'Neill in The Observer of 12 December 1930, said that, "here is a straightforward story which very pleasantly draws a number of red herrings across the docile reader's path. There is a distinct originality in her new expedient for keeping the secret. She discloses it at the outset, turns it inside out, apparently proves that the solution cannot be true, and so produces an atmosphere of bewilderment." [7] This was just one of those books that I finished because I kind of felt like I had to and in the end it wasn't a bad read, it's not really one I can endorse... which is a bit sad. It's also the same way about A Murder Is Announced (the only other Marple book I've read, though I did not review it). Agatha Christie's Murder at the Vicarage was my first Miss Marple. Now that I've had her I can say with knowledge born of experience, she ain't half bad!

The character had previously appeared in short stories published in magazines starting in December 1927. These earlier stories were collected in book form in The Thirteen Problems in 1932.The ending wraps up all loose ends. Lettice reveals that Mrs Lestrange is her mother, Colonel Protheroe's first wife, who is terminally ill; Lettice destroyed the portrait of Lestrange in Protheroe's house so the police would not suspect her. The two depart so that Lestrange can spend her last days travelling the world. Miss Cram is revealed to have known nothing about the false Dr Stone's plot, and Griselda and Dennis confess to having threatened Mrs Price Ridley as a practical joke. Griselda reveals that she is pregnant, which Miss Marple deduced. I don't know why I didn't know that, but I liked it a lot. It was fun to get to know the icon, Miss Jane Marple, from an outside perspective. You get her pluses and her minuses. A more honest interpretation, you could say.