A great read and the solution at the end totally unexpected. ( )

This is one of the Miss Marple mysteries and is pure fun! I loved reading these books as a child and have recently rediscovered them after watching the new BBC series of Miss Marple mysteries. They read very quickly and are so much fun. I love reading a mystery that is more about human nature than forensics! ( )

Basis for the movie Murder, She Said, the first of four with Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple. In the book, Miss Marple is very ancient and virtually immobile,operating very much as an eminence grise , until the very end. During the course of the investigation, she describes her method -- relating the various suspects to "types" resident in her beloved home town. The dark secrets and grim destinies of her neighbors are a most reliable guide to diagnosing crime, it seems. English title: What Mrs. McGillicuddy saw!. ( )

Mrs McGillicuddy sees a women being murder on a train but no one believes her, with the exception of her friend Jane Marple. When the body doesn't turn up Miss Marple enlists the help of Lucy Eylesbarrow to find the body and discover just who murdered the woman and why. This is classic Christie complete with red herrings and misdirection and the revelation of the murderer is a complete surprise - and I love how Miss Marple manages to identify him. ( )

April 21, 1999
The 4:50 From Paddington (aka What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!)
Agatha Christie

My first Miss Marple mystery (not THE first MM, just MY first).

A friend of Miss Marple’s, Mrs. McGillicuddy, is traveling by train to visit with Miss Marple for a few days, and while on the train, witnesses a murder taking place on another train passing by – specifically, a woman being strangled by a man. No one believes her when she reports it, though, and no body is found on the other train. Miss Marple does believe her, of course, and deduces that the body must have been thrown out the train window. She even manages to figure out that it must have been thrown out onto the sprawling grounds of an old estate, and she then engages her brilliant, 30-ish friend, Lucy Eylesbarrow, to infiltrate the grand home of the prominent family who owns the land, find the body, and help solve the murder.

Christie perfects her writing “tone” in this story, I think – not too dark, not too light. A perfect “Malice Domestic”. ( )