The Body in the Library

The Body in the Library is one of my favorite Agatha Christie mysteries, one that truly reveals the genius of Miss Marple. The mystery itself is perfect- it has glamorous movie people and the village staples plus a healthy dose of suspicious characters. In addition, it has a deft psychological discussion of guilt and innocence and the power of gossip to ruin lives that would not be out of place in a modern conversation about crime. Highly recommended!

Written seventy-eight years ago, this book still feels modern and fresh.

It's brimming with energy, humour, and sharp observations and has a twisty plot that kept me guessing right to the end.


'The Body In The Library' was published in 1942 but it feels fresh, light and modern. It has a clever plot that I didn't even begin to guess the truth of but which didn't feel at all like a cheat.

I was pleased to see that the police were shown to be quite competent and did most of the leg work. This made the story more convincing and provided me with plenty of evidence to mull over without any chance of me figuring out what was going on. The competence of the police also served to highlight how Jane Marple's insights were and how ruthlessly she show more used them to extract information unavailable to the police by pressing the buttons of the people she interrogated.

I love that Jane Marple is driven by insight into people's wickedness, frailties, vanities and self-deceptions, with empathy coming almost as an afterthought and only then for people that she sees as innocents. I realised that I wouldn't want to meet her unless she was on my side and even then, she'd know things about me that I don't even admit to myself.

Until I read 'The Murder At The Vicarage' last September, my impressions of Jane Marple came entirely from adaptations of the novels for television. Now that I'm encountering the original text, I wonder how the TV people came to have left out most of the humour. They seem to have paid more attention to the period clothes and cars than to the tone of the novel.

There is a strong undercurrent of humour in 'The Body In The Library', some of it aimed at the genre in an in-joke kind of way, but most of it aimed at the pompous, the unkind and the hypocritical.

Jane Marple has a rare understanding that while class is important, it is money that drives our most desperate actions. She is able to see well-to-do gentlefolk with disconcerting accuracy, seeing beyond the manners and the social position to the person beneath, but is also able to do the same thing with people who make their living serving the gentlefolk. This makes Jane Marple something of an outsider, a status she seems entirely comfortable with.

I think the thing I enjoyed most about the book was the humour. From the start, 'The Body In The Library' reads like a rather drole assault on the more ridiculous elements of detective fiction combined with wickedly accurate evocations of what she calls 'the ruling class of censorious spinsters'.

The whole set up of the book, the finding of the body of an unknown young woman in the library of a respectable Colonel, is positioned as so unlikely (except in detective books) that it is hard for the Colonel and his wife to accept the possibility of it being real. This takes a swipe at detective fiction (where such discoveries go unremarked) and makes the discovery a source of humour rather than horror, that sets the tone for the novel.

Christie double-down on this by having the Colonel's wife, Dolly, call Jane Marple (even though it is not yet eight o'clock in the morning) and invite her to come to the house. Dolly explains that she wants Jane to come because she knows about murders and:
'What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one’s house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean. That’s why I want you to come and help me find out who did it and unravel the mystery and all that. It really is rather thrilling, isn’t it?’
I thought this was fun but also a reality check we readers of mysteries who emphasise the puzzle of finding the murderer over the brutal death of the person murdered.
When Christie moves on to show how the village gossip network functions, she doesn't miss an opportunity to deride the unconscious entitéement of the gossipers. I particularly liked this description:
‘What news?’ demanded Miss Hartnell. She had a deep bass voice and visited the poor indefatigably, however hard they tried to avoid her ministrations.
I used Poirot as my jumping-off point for reading Christie. Now I wish I'd started with Jane Marple. I think Christie likes Jane whereas she only tolerates Poirot. There are exceptions of course. 'The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd' is pretty hard to beat. show less

This was my first Miss Marple mystery. The premise is great: an influential British couple discover a body in their library and it's someone they do not know. Many characters involved and the clues reveal many plot twists and suspects along the way. Interestingly enough, Miss Marple is not featured in much of the first 2/3 of the book. Yes, she is introduced and her prowess at solving mysteries is made clear, but most of the story focuses on the investigations from the police and other friends of the couple in whose house the body was found.

Another murder occurs, which opens up new avenues for suspicion, etc.

In the end, Miss Marple is featured and she solves the mystery quite nicely. Wrapped up in fine form with all the plot twists show more explained.

The reason for 4 stars is that I thought the story dragged a bit throughout the majority of the book. It was interesting, but not to the point where I felt where I needed to put everything aside and keep reading (that would be 5 stars). I finished this book over the course of a few weeks. show less

Not as good (or as funny, and I think that is mostly what is missing) as [b:Murder at the Vicarage|16331|Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple, #1)|Agatha Christie|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388386575l/16331._SX50_.jpg|2589654]; enjoyable all the same.

I love that this elderly woman is dismissed routinely (at one point one of the suspects actually says to her, "Be quiet, you old hag"). I love that Christie allows her title character to be referred to as an "old hag" with no ensuing bitterness or self-doubt. I especially love that Miss Marple solves the crimes based almost exclusively on the life experience she has gained, by virtue of living long enough to become an old hag.

Truly if this is what show more old hagness looks like then I can hardly wait to become one myself. show less

When the body of an unknown young blonde woman is found in the library of Gossington Hall both Colonel and Mrs. Bantry are completely baffled about how she came to be there. While the police do their investiagtions, Mrs. Bantry solicits the help of Miss Marple to determine just who did commit the murder. The case will bring them to a seaside resort and to the old friend of the Bantrys, Mr. Jefferson, whose complicated relationships may just be at the heart of the matter.

Agatha Christie always hits the spot for me and this one was no exception. Miss Marple's detecting skills are top notch as ever, the mystery is well crafted, and I'm always a sucker for any book that involves a library of any kind. I appreciated that this book used the show more limited omniscient viewpoint which allowed for the plot to follow multiple characters at once and, of course, leave Miss Marple's conclusions hidden from the reader until the very end. Again, I always enjoy the humour Christie uses in her novels. I particularly got great glee from one of the characters, an afficionado of detective novels, mentioning he had autographs from several mystery writers including Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie. An excellent Marple mystery and just great fun all around. show less

Downstairs in the lounge, by the third pillar from the left, there sits an old lady with a sweet, placid, spinsterish face and a mind that has plumbed the depths of human iniquity and taken it all as in the day's work...where crime is concerned, she's the goods.

Colonel Bantry wakes one morning to find the dead body of young girl completely unbeknownst to him. His wife sees this tragedy not as that but as an opportunity to watch a real-life mystery unfold from a front-row seat. Mrs. Bantry consequently calls on her friend, Miss Marple, to use her amateur sleuthing skills to crack the case.

This is the second Miss Marple book I picked up, and it was interesting to see the changes from the first book in the series. There is now an omniscient third-person narrator and, while I had some quibbles with the vicar narrating first-person in The Murder at the Vicarage, I did find that I missed some of his insights, especially about the characterizations of the people in the village. However, the narration show more in The Body in the Library allows the reader to get more information from a variety of sources, including the police force and another private detective hired for the case.

The second significant change is that Miss Marple is a bigger character in this book. She is immediately recognized for her ability to solve complex cases and is thus given entry to crime scenes and provided information by the police and the other private detective on the case. The mystery itself is similar to the first one in the series, in that it is sufficiently complex while also basically simple. I didn't guess who the culprit was at all but once revealed, it all made perfect sense.

The various side characters once again made the book. While I didn't necessarily like them per se, they are varied and interesting. Christie has a knack for writing mostly believable characters who display an array of emotions, motives, etc. There is quite a bit of classism in this book, although I'm never quite sure if that is merely a reflection of certain characters' opinions or if it is also a bit of Christie's own thoughts on the matter.

All in all though, I enjoyed this book as a light, quick, and entertaining read. I've put further Miss Marple books on hold for the moment while I catch up on other reading, but I will probably revisit this series again in the near future. For the audiophile, the narrator of this book (Stephanie Cole) was good, but not necessarily great. show less