Here is the last of the 2009 books (phew!).
The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie
Grade: B+
Morning has come and what a day is in store for Colonel and Mrs. Bantry, because there’s a dead body in their library! Mrs. Bantry immediately calls upon her old friend, Miss Marple, to solve the mystery before the community’s suspicions become permanently fixed on Colonel Bantry.
The back cover of this paperback quotes The New York Times. It says, “In the upper brackets of excellence.” But whether it meant Christie in general or this book in particular, I do not know. Both are good. It is possible, though, that some of my enjoyment of this book was diminished by my having read it before. I am looking forward to reading more of the Marple mysteries that are completely new to me.
Odds and Ends
beer and skittles: fun, or a pleasant situation.
Cophetua complex: in the medieval romance called “The King and the Beggar-Maid,” Cophetua was a king that fell in love at first sight with a beggar, thus this phrase describes an older gentleman who falls for a poor, young girl.
point-to-point: a type of cross-country horse race.
retroussé: the victim was described as having a “retroussé nose,” which means that it was turned up at the end, like a pug nose.
And here is the Marplethon list as it stands now.
MISS MARPLE STORIES
- 4.50 From Paddington
- The Affair at the Bungalow
- Agatha Christie’s Marple The Life and Times
- At Bertram’s Hotel
- The Bloodstained Pavement
- The Blue Geranium
- The Body in the Library
- A Caribbean Mystery
- The Case of the Caretaker
- The Case of the Perfect Maid
- A Christmas Tragedy
- The Companion
- Death by Drowning
- The Four Suspects
- Greenshaw’s Folly
- The Herb of Death
- The Idol House of Astarte
- Ingots of Gold
- The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
- Miss Marple Tells a Story
- Miss Marple’s Final Cases
- Motive vs. Opportunity
- The Moving Finger
- The Murder at the Vicarage
- A Murder Is Announced
- Nemesis
- A Pocket Full of Rye
- Sanctuary
- Sleeping Murder
- Strange Jest
- Tape-Measure Murder
- They Do It With Mirrors
- The Thirteen Problems
- Three Blind Mice and Other Stories
- The Thumb Mark of St. Peter
- The Tuesday Night Club
P.S. There seems to be an error in the list. Three Blind Mice and Other Stories includes four stories that are listed separately, so the count should be 35 rather than 36.
Actually, it appears there is another mistake in the list. “The Thirteen Problems” is just another title under which “The Tuesday Club Murders” was published. This list was quite misleading. It’s bad enough that including all the short story titles made it look much longer than it actually was, but to include the titles of the books from which they came, that’s just not right. The Marplethon isn’t turning out to be as challenging as I thought it would be, so I will have to stretch it out. Some of the ideas I’m playing with are finding and/or making things mentioned in the stories (seed cake, for example) and reading one of Christie’s biographies, as well as her autobiography.