So witty! ( )

Well it wasn't terrible but I guess I'm just not a fan of this type of mystery. There wasn't ever a character that I loved. Everyone was rather boring and Miss Marple was hardly in the book which surprised me. I feel I should read another in the series just to give Agatha Christie another chance. ( )

This is the first of the Miss Marple books, but not one in which she makes a prominent appearance. The story is narrated by the Revered Leonard Clement, the Vicar of St Mary Mead, and concerns the murder of the highly disagreeable Colonel Protheroe in the vicars study.

As one expects with any novel by Christie the characters are all well delineated, each one distinct and with a degree of depth to them. The relationship and difference in character between the vicar and his wife Griselda is particularly entertaining, with a great deal of gentle humour. Griselda is a bit flighty, possessing a mildly dark sense of humour especially when referring to her pastoral duties amongst the women of the village. The difficulties they experience with the sole domestic servant, whose cooking skills are legendary for all the wrong reasons, provides a lightness to the main plot of the novel.

This first book featuring the deductive capacities of Miss Marple feels a little tentative, not in terms of the plot development but in how Miss Marple herself is introduced. While it becomes abundantly clear that without her involvement the police would not have apprehended the culprit, there are a number of classical Christie plot twists, the way she is involved is hesitant and diffident. That said, in the closing chapters as we build up to the big reveal of the murderer, she becomes a more visible and assertive character and Miss Marple as we think of her today is transformed from a slightly batty old maid to the insightful amateur sleuth we know and love.

Just as this is the first time we meet Miss Marple, this is the first appearance of St Mary Mead in its guise as a small, sleepy, English village becoming a metaphor for the world. In it we meet the petty, the vindictive, the flirtatious, and the disagreeable to name but a few. Miss Marple's contention has always been that in a village you have the opportunity of observing all the delinquencies, weaknesses and evils of the human character. The disappointment of this book is that we don't really get a sense of following her point of view, except where it overlaps with the vicar, her refreshingly low opinion of people really only comes out towards the end of the story and is less pronounced than in other books. ( )

Miss Marple is usually right. That’s what makes her unpopular.’

Christie, Agatha. Miss Marple 3-Book Collection 1: The Murder at the Vicarage, The Body in the Library, The Moving Finger (p. 245). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

In The Murder at the Vicarage, the vicar, Leonard Clement is horrified to discover local magistrate, Colonel Protheroe, shot dead in his study. In a small town like St. Mary Mead, a murder is the most exciting thing to happen in years and soon, the whole town has put on their detective caps and is busy trying to solve the mystery. But only one person can be right - an elderly spinster with an interest in the study of human nature - the one and only - Miss Jane Marple.

Although I've read a lot of Hercule Poirot, I'm afraid I've never gotten around to reading any Miss Marple and I was pleasantly surprised - and somewhat confused. The mystery was good and I enjoyed the cast of characters residing in St Mary Mead - but for the first Miss Marple book, Miss Marple herself is surprisingly absent. I mean Agatha Christie is fond of experimenting with her characters and narrative styles and Poirot has often taken on only a peripheral role - but for some reason I was baffled by the use of it here. Maybe because it's supposed to be the first book. Either way, it didn't suffer for the lack, although I look forward to getting to know Miss Marple in future books.

I really liked the narrator, Len who for a vicar, was rather blunt and uncharitable - even if only in his thoughts. His wife, Griselda was great as well and I adored the elderly ladies of the town.

‘My dear young man, you underestimate the detective instinct of village life. In St Mary Mead everyone knows your most intimate affairs. There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.’

Christie, Agatha. Miss Marple 3-Book Collection 1: The Murder at the Vicarage, The Body in the Library, The Moving Finger (p. 43). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Overall a classic Agatha Christie murder mystery with an interesting cast of characters, a delightful small town setting and an unexpected murderous twist. 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. ( )

Who doesn't know the famous Miss Marple and her investigation talents? When it comes to well-known detectives in classic literature, along with Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot she will belong to those who are mentioned first. I can almost imagine the gossipy, annoying and very inquisitive lady snooping around the village, and it's easy to understand why a smart character like her earned such a recognition beneath crime and mystery novels. "Murder at the Vicarage" is called the first book in the Miss Marple series, yet she only appears in a handful of scenes, irregularly interspersed in the course of this novel.

In the first place, Agatha Christie writes about a colonel's death and the small town's vicar who tries to discover the murderer's identity. Most of the characters will at some point of the novel be suspected of being the wanted murderer, but the reader should expect the final reveal to be somehow unpredictable. I thought I had figured out who the killer was halfway through the novel, but the outcome was ... I could not have been more wrong. And it would indeed be surprising if anyone else was as smart as Miss Marple in the quest of figuring out the identity of the culprit. However, this also caused another one of this book's weak spots: Although it is only 270 pages long, it dragged on for the second half, as nearly no new information were added and the investigators were more or less left groping in the dark.

Agatha Christie writes about very different characters trying to live in a small town where nothing ever happens - until this highly disliked man is murdered at the vicarage. As the novel is written from the first-person-perspective of the vicar, Leonard Clement, the reader has to rely on his observations, which made it even harder to guess the outcome of the murder mystery. After all, the author managed to write complicated and confusing murder mysteries with nearly no loose ends, however, something else fell by the wayside: the characters. With nearly no character development or interesting relationships present, it is hardly possible to get invested into the plot itself, and with Miss Marple being only a side character, the most interesting part of the novel was ignored for most of the time.

My first Miss Marple novel, my second Agatha Christie novel, and still no fan of her works. I guess I'll be staying faithful to Sherlock Holmes! ( )