This isn’t a great mystery novel, but I had a good time with it anyway just for its knowingness. I felt like I could have been checking boxes, whether we’re talking about elements specifically having to do with the character of Miss Marple or tactics general to any of Christie’s mysteries.

With regard to the former there’s Miss Marple’s long acquaintance with the evil of a “sweet peaceful village” and her method of finding “the right parallel” between said evil and other crimes, given that “human nature . . . is very much the same everywhere.”

Chief among the general tactics is the information overload. We begin with a layout of the main floor of Stonygates (that’s the country estate setting). Should we be studying this? Then there follow two chapters of background material filling us in on the family dynamics. You see Ruth suspects that something isn’t quite right at Stonygates and that her sister Carrie Louise may be in danger, so she sends Miss M to investigate. But to understand what’s going on you have to know that Carrie Louise is on her third husband, with children (stepchildren, adopted children, natural children, grandchildren) all assembled around her. So yes, two chapters have to be spent filling us in here. But is any of this relevant? Or is it all a smokescreen? It’s natural to think we should be paying attention to it, perhaps even making notes, but our attention always has a filter and naturally we want to get on with the story. I mean, we don’t even have a body yet.

A regular motif in Christie’s mysteries is the crime that’s conceived and presented as a dramatic performance, which is something that really gets leaned into here. I don’t think anyone reading this book for the first time will have any doubt that the argument, which takes place behind a closed door, between Lewis Serrocold and Edgar Lawson is just a show (Edgar is immediately flagged by Miss Marple as being an excessively “dramatic” young man, delivering lines as though “playing in amateur theatricals”). But to what end? To create a distraction? Because it would be too obvious if one of them turned out to be the killer then, wouldn’t it?

But there are even more obvious suspects that we feel can’t be in play for the same reason. The two guys who weren’t in the great hall at the time of the murder, for example. No matter how suspicious they seem – one is sullen and American, the other a drama queen – we feel like they can be struck off the list.

In approaching the mystery this way, generically as it were, we’re not even looking for clues. Which is a good thing because there aren’t any. The solution just comes to Miss Marple, after it just comes to one of the other characters (who then must be disposed of in a secondary murder). There is no single event or material fact that triggers this but just an awareness of the drama of life at Stonygates, where amateur theatricals are in fact part of the curriculum at an adjacent school for juvenile delinquents. All the world’s a stage, or a magic show, and when the one churchly widow looks “exactly as the relict of a Canon of the Established Church should look” it surprises the police detective “because so few people ever did look like what they were.” Which, in turn, make us think that she can’t possibly be the murderer either.

But if everyone is an actor performing a part it’s hard to tell why one particular bit of stagecraft should mean more than any other. Or, for that matter, one character’s view of reality should be privileged over someone else’s. This is what makes the book finally disappointing. But I still enjoyed it, especially for the way it foregrounds the reality vs. illusion nature of most of Christie’s contrivances, with murder being presented knowingly as a magic trick pulled off with stagecraft, misdirection, and sleight of hand. You go into every whodunit like you do a magic show, expecting to be fooled in all the usual ways. Knowing this doesn’t diminish the experience but is part of the fun.

Marple index