Miss Marple : The Complete Short Stories

Ah Miss Marple, how do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.

I love the way you are always knitting something soft and pink and fuzzy,
and have to stop mystery solving to count your stitches.

I love that you are the smartest and most cynical person in the room, and oh so sweetly knock everyone else's theories to pieces.

I love the way you bully your endless succession of housemaids, and earn their undying loyalty.

I love the way the police begin by condescending to you and end by fearing you.

I love your fierceness.

I love your certainty that justice matters, and that it is up to each of us.

I love your garden.

I love your black lace mittens, straight back, and white hair piled high.

I love your humor, and the twinkle in your eye.

But most of all, I show more love reading away an afternoon with you in St Mary Mead. show less

This collection of Miss Marple short stories highlights many of the things I find interesting about Christie, as well as some oWf her weaknesses. Christie's strength lies in setting up complicated plots and drawing out rich characters in all of their particularities. The short story format, then, takes away Christie's greatest strength. What is left are bare-bones Christie-style stories.

Each story in this collection is a whodunit, usually featuring a murder. Everyone is either bewildered, or convinced that the wrong person is guilty, except, of course, for Miss Marple. Christie affords no energy to the set-up; most of these stories begin with a group telling each other stories. The solutions to these stories involve knowledge of all show more sorts of things with which the average reader will have little familiarity, such as the uses and results of certain poisons.

Perhaps most striking to me was just how weak the character of Miss Marple actually is. There's simply very little to her, except a conviction that young people are foolish. The introduction to the volume tries to argue otherwise, but I am not convinced.

Christie aficionados will certainly want to read this volume, but I would recommend one of Christie's novels to the uninitiated. show less

I've always been a fan of Agatha Christie, and Miss Marple is my favourite of her detectives. So why, you may wonder, am I giving this audiobook of Miss Marple short stories a mere three stars? It's because I didn't like the way Miss Marple was narrated in this audiobook.

Juliet Stevenson, the voice artist, is my favourite narrator. She's also a fantastic actress, and appears in so many of my favourite films, including Sense and Sensibility and Bend it Like Beckham. However, I found that her voicing of Miss Marple made that famous old lady sleuth sound arch and disappoving, which is not at all how I have envisioned her. I didn't like this Miss Marple, who sounded judgemental and self-satisfied. I don't think I can blame Juliet Stevenson show more for not being the Miss Marple of my imaginings; I'm certain that audiobook readers are under the direction of somebody or another, and that Ms. Stevenson was told to read as she did.

Whatever the case, I did not enjoy this audiobook as much as I'd hoped, but I liked the stories as much as I did when I first read them long ago. show less

Delightfully clever still, if a touch dated (racist, classist, sexist).

Quotes

"Well, my dear," said Miss Marple, "human nature is much the same everywhere, and, of course, one has opportunities of observing it at close quarters in a village." (p. 78, "The Thumb Mark of St. Peter)

"Now, as I expect you know, there is nothing more cruel than talk, and there is nothing more difficult to combat." (81)

"As you say, one mustn't waste one's thoughts on the guilty - it's the innocent who matter." (150, "The Four Suspects")

"It wasn't what I expected either. But facts are facts, and if one is proved to be wrong, one must just be humble about it and start again." (168, "A Christmas Tragedy")

"One treats a thing lightly to take away from the - well, show more the horror of it." (Raymond, 337, "Greenshaw's Folly") show less

This was my first experience reading Agatha Christie. I know, I am late to the party. After reading these twenty short stories, I can only describe Christie in one word, overrated. That is not to say that Christie is not a good writer, but she does not live up to the hype surrounding her works.

Only a couple of these stories were even mildly amusing and interesting. At times I dreaded picking up the book to continue reading it. By the halfway point I was tempted to DNF the book, but I kept going, hoping the stories would get better. Unfortunately, they failed to improve.

In every story, Miss Marple solved the mystery with information not known to the reader. As a result, I felt cheated as a reader. Had Christie provided the missing show more information to her readers, the mystery would be obvious.

This will be the last of Christie’s writings that I read. show less

I like Miss Marple herself as a character and therefore rate it highly. But the stories, as a whole, are rather uneven. Some very compelling, others very not so much so. I think they get better as they go on and as Christie fleshes them out to full stories instead of puzzles. The ones where Marple herself is involved in the workings of the mystery, instead of just as an observer, are the best. My opinion is that Christie does some of her best writing with Marple in the center of the action because in removing the "professional" aspect of a detective or police, she is forced to find more nuanced and more interesting (for me, at least) ways of solving things. I think these stories bear that up. I also think the stories with Mrs Dolly show more Bantry and co. contain some of the most humorous moments I've read in Christie's writing. show less

This collection was pretty much a hit with me. There are only a few stories that I felt okay to meh about and so I gave the entire book 4 stars.

If you don't know Miss Marple by now, I don't suggest you start with this collection. What I do like though is that Miss Marple is a lot more endearing in these short stories than she was in her first appearance (Murder at the Vicarage). We get to see Miss Marple solve the solution to all of the below mysteries time and time again and everyone around her being astounded by how brilliant she is.

The Tuesday Night Club (5 stars)-Introduction to Miss Marple and several other key characters we will see again and again. Miss Marple's slightly jerky nephew Raymond. His girlfriend/fiancee/wife Joyce show more whose name weirdly switches in later books and Sir Henry Clithering who works for Scotland Yard who appeared in some other Miss Marple books. The group that attended this first get together decides to tell a real life murder mystery to see who can guess who dun it. I loved the solution to this one a lot. This was a great way to show how astute Miss Marple was though she acts like she is not as smart as she really is.

The Idol House of Astarte (3.5 stars)-Another murder mystery told by Dr. Pender (introduced in the first story) tells about a man who unexpectedly stabbed though no one was near him when he was injured. I thought the whole premise was a bit far-fetched myself. Once again Miss Marple quickly solves it.

Ingots of Gold (2 stars)-Maybe I just hate this one since it is told by Raymond West and it irked the crap out of me through all of these stories. Also this one was not that great of a mystery and the solution bored me to tears.

The Bloodstained Pavement (5 stars)-Told by Joyce, I really loved the description of the places and people in this one. And I can honestly say that I did not catch on to what was going on and what really happened until she and Ms. Marple explained the solution.

Motive V Opportunity (3.5 stars)-Told by Mr. Petherick and honestly kind of a boring story about what happened to a will. I also hated that the party behind this got away with it too.

The Thumb Mark of St. Peter (2 stars)-Told by Miss Marple. I still have no idea what in the world was happening. I think because Christie chose to have Miss Marple ramble here and there I could not keep straight anything that was said. I was able to follow along just when we almost go to the end, but seriously the whole story was straight up convoluted. I was really happy to get to the end of this story.

The Blue Geranium (5 stars)-Told by Colonel Bantry (from The Body in the Library) I thought the whole story was well done and the final solution quite clever. Once again Miss Marple hits on the solution that no one else did.

The Companion (4.5 stars)- Told by Dr. Lloyd. I thought this was kind of a meandering story. And I have to say I hate when guilty parties escape. In this story we have Dr. Lloyd I think having a grudging admiration for the murderer.

The Four Suspects (5 stars)-Told by Sir Henry Clithering again. I loved this whole story about a secret German society and how one of the suspects was able to plan out a murder.

A Christmas Tragedy (5 stars)-Told by Miss Marple and I really did enjoy this one. You have to love someone that can meet a total stranger and call him out as a murderer. I thought the solution to this one was quite ingenious too.

The Herb of Death (5 stars)-Told by Mrs. Bantry. I really did get creeped out while reading this a bit because once you realize what happened and why the whole thing was so sad. Mrs. Bantry is one of my favorite re-occurring characters in the Miss Marple books so it was great to get a story told by her.

The Affair at the Bungalow (3 stars)-Told by actress Jane Helier. I seriously thought she was not that bright when she was introduced in the preceding stories, but the ending to this one did make me laugh and groan at the same time. I can see why Mrs. Bantry probably wanted to shake her.

Death by Drowning (5 stars)-Sir Henry is back again in this one visiting the Bantrys. Coming back to St. Mary's Mead he is called upon by Miss Marple to intervene when she thinks a guilty party may get away with murder. She's actually not really in this one that much, but we get to see how Sir Henry's mind works.

Miss Marple Tells a Story (3 stars)-Miss Marple tells her nephew Raymond and his wife Joan (see name change) about how she figured out a woman was murdered and who did it. It wasn't as great as some of the other stories. I think anytime Christie tells a story in Miss Marple's voice the book suffers.

Strange Jest (3 stars)-Once again actress Jane Helier calls upon Miss Marple to help her friends figure out where some buried treasure is after their uncle claims to have left them something, but they can't figure out where it is.

The Case of the Perfect Maid (3.5 stars)-Miss Marple is called upon to help out a young maid accused of theft. I have to say that I had time swallowing the solution in this one.

The Case of the Caretaker (3 stars)-After an illness, Miss Marple isn't feeling like her old self. Her doctor, Doctor Haydock gives her a mystery to solve to liven her up. I didn't like that half of the story was in italics. It also gives my brain a jog when books switches fonts like that, so I had to re-read this story twice through.

Tape-Measure Murder (5 stars)-Miss Marple figures out who killed a woman and why. I actually like this one since it reminded me slightly of a Murder is Announced with regards to how bold the murderer was to do what they did and having to worry about getting caught.

Greenshaw's Folly (2.5 stars)-Another story featuring Miss Marple's nephew Raymond. I seriously didn't get this story that much and once again was pretty bored. I also didn't find the story realistic at all.

Sanctuary (5 stars)-I thought this one was actually really good and I am glad that the short story collection ended on a high note. I swear it be nice to have a family tree/acquaintances/friends flowchart of Miss Marple's done one day. In this story we are introduced to her godchild who also calls her Aunt Jane. This one was smartly done though the story does end I thought on a slightly odd note. I wish we had been given an epilogue of the whole collection because this is the last story and that's all she wrote. show less