Sleeping Murder (original 1976; edition 2003)

For some reason, this creeped me out a bit. I guess it's how twisted the murderer is, and yet all along you/the main characters rely on his testimony... I did see it coming, rather, but something about his character really got to me. Ugh.

That, plus the fact that I called it after about one hundred pages, means I didn't enjoy this book so much. There wasn't anything especially distinguishing and fun about the characters or the setting that made it extra interesting. ( )

This is an interesting Christie book. She deals with young married love, brotherly love, disappointed love destructive obsessive love and unrequited love. Best of all the kind of love she describes love like that of Miss Marple who has a great love of her fellow man; who when she sees a young couple headed for heartbreak as well as danger puts herself up as a guardian angel.

The plot is well described by other reviewers so I won't go into that. What amazed me was that when this was adapted for the storyline, the relationships and basic plot were changed by the powers that be. I am glad I read the book, because it does round out Jane Marple.

( )

Hmmm, I dunno, the whodunit thing kept me mildly interested while I was reading it, but I can't help but think there's a certain jot or tittle of camp in the way people enjoy this stuff. Maybe if I'd come to it already loving the old lady. I mean, it was stylish, from time to time--I liked the quotation from The Duchess of Malfi as a central plot point--but the class attitudes on display seemed fairly archaic for the '30s. And as far as whodunit, is the formula just sketch us a bunch of likely rogues and then it's always the least likely one from that delimited field? I haven't read a tonne of these books but it seems like the twist is always it's the least likely one and if so that's hardly a twist at all. ( )

Read for book club - not bad at all! This is only the second Agatha Cristie that I have read - the first was And Then There Were None but that was many, many years ago. I would read more. ( )

Sleeping Murder, the last of the Miss Marple series -the first for me- was a bit slow, but interesting. I already had a hunch as to who the killer was pretty early on, unlike the other couple of Agatha Christie novels I've read. ( )