Abandoned by Booklikes

Please note that I gave this book 3.5 stars, but rounded it up to 4 stars on Goodreads

It's been a while, but Moonlight Reader and I did a buddy read of this book. You can find her review Miss Marple Wins Again.

I do love Agatha Christie because after all of this time she feels as familiar and comfortable as an old shoe. I read this one a few years back, so it was nice to revisit it since I had the book on my shelf.

We have Miss Marple dealing with the changing of the village of St. Mary Mead after World War II. It's not explicitly said, but based on some of the descriptions of people's clothing choices and other things, I imagine it had to be the 1950s or 1960s when this was supposed to take place.

Miss Marple is feeling a bit frustrated, because after an illness, she is dealing with having a nurse hovering over her all of the time, and she is definitely feeling her age. After walking around one afternoon (after getting rid of the nurse) we have Miss Marple taking comfort that even though St. Mary's Mead has changed, people are still the same.

When Mrs. Bantry (The Body in the Library) returns to St. Mary's Mead, she and Miss Marple catch up and talk about murder. I did love everyone saying that Miss Marple needs a good murder to get out of her funk. And just like that, a murder occurs.

At Mrs Bantry's old estate, a Hollywood movie star (Marina Gregg) and her director husband (Jason Rudd) have moved in. During the party, one of the village's local woman (Heather Badcock) feels faint and dies after having a drink. There's a lot of twists and turns to figure out who if anyone wanted this woman dead or was the poisoned drink meant for someone else.

This one reminded me slightly of a Poirot book because we have the murders wracking up in this one. We don't have Poirot running around saying enigmatic things though, thank goodness. I have always liked Miss Marple more, maybe because she didn't treat the police or anyone else like they were lesser humans for not being as smart as she was. I liked that Miss Marple and the investigator sought each other out and he treated her like a colleague. It was also nice to see Mrs. Bantry again and seeing her still obsessed with her flowerbeds and assisting Miss Marple.

I thought the plot was overall good, there are a couple of red herrings thrown in, but even when I read this for the first time years ago, I still picked out the murder almost as soon as we find out who is killed. This one really did focus more on Miss Marple, getting older, and how much she missed the old way of doing things. I would imagine everything somehow being modern would be a bit of a shock. And to see so many people that you were close to, die, or move way had to be harder still.

The ending I found to be a let down. I think it was because I already knew who the murder was so early on even way back when, so it was a bit much to wait for everyone else to get it. Also the final scene with Miss Marple and her guessing at what happened to the murderer was kind of anti-climatic. It's left open ended about what if anything Miss Marple does with the information she guesses at.

What made this book so interesting to me is that Agatha Christie based this on a real life tragedy of a well known American actress. Don't go and Google because it will spoil the book for you if you haven't read it yet.