I don’t think there can be any question that Agatha Christie got tired of the mystery formula. And indeed in her Miss Marple novels and stories she often takes a poke at its conventions. The events are often compared, for example, to the sort of thing you might read in detective fiction. The Body in the Library makes this explicit, with the titular crime being a challenge Christie set for herself to try to see what she could do with such a cliché.
“The Affair at the Bungalow” is another such experiment in playing with the reader’s expectations. We’re led to have our doubts about the story Jane Helier is telling right from the start, but the trick Christie is playing is in the fact that, satisfied with knowing this much, we don’t doubt Jane any further.
It’s a clever conceit, but the crime that doesn’t happen in this case is just as far-fetched as most of the crimes that do in the Marple canon. Making it something different, but not in a good way or enough.
Alex Good 
Would you like to be a detective like Miss Marbbles? What kind of crimes would you solve?
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I would like to live in a quiet English village where people drop dead for no reason, right and left. But I wouldn’t want to know who was doing it.
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Have you ever solved a crime?
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The only case I got to the bottom of was a case of Mallomars.
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That sounds pointless.
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Pretty much, as the crime in this case is hypothetical.
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I’m trying to summon up “I care” so I can rage against Miss Marple. But being on vacation I really don’t care. Because I had chicken Alfredo fettuccine last night and it was so good that I’m still basking in it’s memory…
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Bask, Booky. Bask in it.
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