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4.50 From Paddington: B2
4.50 From Paddington: B2
4.50 From Paddington: B2
Audiobook (abridged)3 hours

4.50 From Paddington: B2

Written by Agatha Christie

Narrated by Jane Collingwood

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners.

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter with the language targeted at learners of English.

A woman is murdered on a train.

When Miss Marple telephones her friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow
and asks her to go undercover to investigate, Lucy quickly accepts the challenge!

Who is the dead woman? What was the motive for her murder? And why was the body thrown from the train and later hidden at Rutherford Hall?

When a second murder takes place, everyone at Rutherford Hall seems in danger, so Miss Marple sets a trap to catch the murderer.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 13, 2016
ISBN9780008210519
4.50 From Paddington: B2
Author

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She died in 1976, after a prolific career spanning six decades.

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Rating: 3.981132075471698 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Radio adaptation. Classic Christie. Miss Marple’s friend watches a murder on a parallel train. As no body has been found Miss Marple instructs a young friend to take a job in the country house where the grounds adjoin the railway tracks...Once again I was entertainingly misdirected.A mystery on a train then a Country House puzzle, what’s not to like!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One of my favorites, a family murder at the family home. Miss Marple at her best.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When I was in my late teens/early twenties I read all Christie's I could find, and I was lucky to find almost all of them, so this, more than twenty years later, was a re-read, which did not matter at all. The pleasure was still there, and I knew there will be a surprising turn out at the end, although I was not sure in which direction. Why do so many people love reading Christie's novels? Hard to say, but I think that one element is the lack of the really dark, evil and gruesome elements. Trying to find out more about a murder is almost like getting ready for a picknick - everyone is having fun in the process, which naturally includes the reader. And when everything turns out all right in the end and the wicked are rightfully punished, the life in the countryside can continue to unravel peacefully...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In which a woman witnesses a murder on a passing train, leading Miss Marple to a feuding family.

    "4.50 from Paddington" (or "What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw" in the US) is a strong Marple work written on the cusp of Christie’s middle and late periods. As with many of her best works, there’s an intriguing and unsettled family dynamic, which spits out suspects left, right and centre. Best of all, there’s a strong investigator character in Lucy Eyelesbarrow, a young woman who goes undercover for Miss Marple at Rutherford Hall, which allows Marple to play to her strengths without the novel coming across as laconic. (Lucy is also the best thing about the better-than-average Joan Hickson adaptation.)

    Several late Christie works deal with “unclear murders”: a clue suggests someone died at some point somewhere, but with no clear information. (Witness the later Tommy and Tuppence books, for instance.) Most of the time, this leads to a confused narrative, relying too much on conflicting memories without the emotional strength that ties into the powerful nostalgia novels such as "Five Little Pigs". Here, though, there’s enough intrigue in the murder – occurring on one train, witnessed by a woman on another – and Rutherford Hall provides so many possibilities, that things just work.

    "4.50 from Paddington" has elements of a classic, but doesn’t quite cut the mustard, for the simple reason that betrays many Marple novels: the limited, hazy clues simply don’t yield much fruit. In the climax, Marple is so certain of her case that she plants an elaborate – and very public trip – to catch the killer. Had she proven incorrect, this would surely have given the game away to the true murderer. Given that it’s so hard to see how Marple reaches her conclusions – or, rather, how she reaches them with so much certainty – this seems reckless. However, I’ll call this one a very solid read.

    [Sometimes found under the title "Murder, She Said", to tie in with the 1960s adaptation starring Margaret Rutherford.]

    Marple ranking: 3rd out of 14
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Deadly TrainspottingIn 4:50 From Paddington all the elements that made Agatha's writing so remarkably effective are on display in full force. Suspense builds; characters are interesting, but not too complicated to be confusing; clues are sprinkled throughout; and, perhaps most importantly, Miss Marple is an active presence, rather than a peripheral observer as we've so often seen her lately.4:50 From Paddington was first published in 1957 and originally appeared in the United States under the title What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!. Frankly, I prefer that rather jaunty title; and so that's how I'll refer to it from here on out.And what, exactly, did Mrs. Elspeth McGillicuddy see when she was traveling by train back to her home in Milchester after a day of Christmas shopping? As another train comes alongside and runs parallel to hers for a few moments, she looks out her compartment window and sees…Standing with his back to the window and to her was a man. His hands were round the throat of a woman who faced him, and he was slowly, remorselessly, strangling her. Her eyes were starting from their sockets, her face was purple and congested. As Mrs. McGillicuddy watched, fascinated, the end came, the body went limp and crumpled in the man's hands.It's that word "remorselessly" which Agatha inserts in almost an off-hand fashion, that illustrates just how brutal and determined her killers can be. This murderer is no exception; by the time the book has run its course, bodies will be littering the landscape.Mrs. McGillicuddy immediately reports the murder to the train's ticket collector. Then, when she's disbelieved, she hails a porter and tells him to inform the local constabulary of the crime on the other train. By Chapter 2, she's sitting at Jane Marple's hearth telling her all about the deadly episode of trainspotting. Jane Marple, she knows, will believe her. After all, "Everybody in St. Mary Mead knew Miss Marple; fluffy and dithery in appearance, but inwardly as sharp and as shrewd as they make them." If Miss Marple can't make something out of nothing, then no one can.The two old ladies decide to wait for an announcement about the discovery of the body to appear in the local papers. When nothing hits the press, they tell the police about the incident, but they're still greeted with raised eyebrows and mild skepticism. As one inspector says, "I dare say it's just make believe—-sort of thing old ladies do make up, like seeing flying saucers at the bottom of the garden, and Russian agents in the lending library."Without a body, who can prove a crime has even been committed? Inquiries at the train companies prove equally fruitless.Miss Marple sticks by her friend, determined to get some proof that there's truth behind What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw. Through a clever bit of mathematics and engineering, Miss Marple determines the precise spot along the route where the killer could have conceivably tossed a dead body off the train before it pulled into the station.It's at this point the novel takes a decisive leap forward into the typical patterns of a Christie investigation. On the one hand, you have the police who are initially bemused and skeptical; then there is the amateur sleuthing that takes place, each chapter adding more and more characters to the list of suspects; eventually, Scotland Yard stops smirking and pursues the case with all official fervor and bluster; while dear dithery Miss Marple quietly solves the mystery by paying attention to the small details of human behavior.For this case, Miss Marple enlists the aid of a younger and spryer version of herself to do the actual legwork and gather the clues. Lucy Eyelesbarrow is a smart, sassy girl who has earned a reputation for being one of the best freelance domestic laborers in all of England. "Once she came into a house," we're told, "all worry, anxiety and hard work went out of it." Miss Marple hires Lucy to plant herself in Rutherford Hall, the gone-to-seed estate near the spot where she determined the body must have been tossed. Lucy insinuates herself into the Crackenthorpe clan and is soon doing a good job dusting, cooking, eavesdropping and poking around old, dusty barns.The Crackenthorpes are the typical dysfunctional family we find in many of Agatha's novels. There's a miserly, cantankerous patriarch; there's his long-suffering and devoted daughter who never married; there's the renegade artist son just in from Spain; there's the stuffy son who's a respected financier; there's the ne'er-do-well son who leads a double life; there's the widower of old Crackenthorpe's daughter who was killed several years earlier; and there's the family doctor who also has a tender eye for the spinster daughter. They all have motive (MONEY!) and opportunity (SHAKY ALIBIS!) and they all rotate in and out of the Prime Suspect Number One slot as Lucy gathers clues and feeds them to Miss Marple.Part of the intrigue in What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw is the fact that initially there's no evidence of a crime. And then, once a body is discovered at Rutherford Hall, no one is able to identify the dead woman. This is the big question mark which looms over most of the book-—not only do we not know how the murder was carried out, we don't even know who was strangled (or, indeed, if the corpse is the same one Mrs. McGillicuddy saw through the train window). There are certainly some shady goings-on in the Crackenthorpe family, but Agatha strings us along for most of the novel with what could feasibly be unconnected events.By the end of What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw, all the tumblers are clicking into place in Miss Marple's mind...."I have been wondering whether it might perhaps be all much simpler than we suppose. Murders so often are quite simple, with an obvious rather sordid motive...."At this point, you'd think the murderer would be buying tickets on the next train out of town. But of course that doesn't happen; besides, that would spoil all our fun of watching Miss Marple tighten the noose around the neck of the killer.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    2020 review of hoopla audiobook performed by Emilia FoxI did not remember this plot at all, so it was like listening to a brand new book. The performance was great, the story was junior-high level, which is when I probably read this in the first place. Which is fine for me for an audiobook. I was able to follow the story completely. Miss Marple will never be my favorite, the dithering old lady act is something I've always found annoying, yet somehow I still like the books just fine.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I think this is one of the best of Mrs. Christie’s books. As all of her books, very well written, but the twists and turns of the story are amazing. (The movie made of, “4:50 from Paddington,” with the excellent Joan Hickson as Miss Marple, doesn’t start to do it justice!) Miss Marple is now 90 years old and, although she doesn’t appear much, as always, enchants readers with her subtle yet quite ironic sense of humor. For instance, her statement about Gaugain (*) is absolutely hilarious; it would certainly be frowned upon by the PC crowd had it been written nowadays. (Might contain spoiler.) There is a funny scene where a comment is made about “old maids” (i.e., old, unmarried women), which by today’s PC standards wouldn’t work: Miss Marple would now be Ms. Marple, therefore concealing her marital status! Also, in the last chapter Miss Marple works up with her friend (the Mrs. McGillicuddy of the title) that she should ask to “go upstairs”; I am pretty sure younger audiences would be unaware that that was a polite, Edwardian way of asking to go to the restroom…

    (*) “I myself never really cared for paintings of native women, and although I know he is very much admired, I have never cared for that lurid mustard color. One really feels quite bilious looking at his pictures.”
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Sensible Elspeth McGillicuddy is not given to hallucinations. Or is she? After she boards the Paddington Station train and becomes a witness to an apparent murder, no one believes her but her friend-the indomitable sleuth Miss Jane Marple. Christy holds all the information very close to her chest and does not let go of it until the reveal at the end of the book. I still found the story interesting and enjoyed it very much. Her characters were fascinating and the plot was nicely paced. I look forward to reading more of her novels and recommend this book to those who love mysteries.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    April 21, 1999The 4:50 From Paddington (aka What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!)Agatha ChristieMy first Miss Marple mystery (not THE first MM, just MY first). A friend of Miss Marple’s, Mrs. McGillicuddy, is traveling by train to visit with Miss Marple for a few days, and while on the train, witnesses a murder taking place on another train passing by – specifically, a woman being strangled by a man. No one believes her when she reports it, though, and no body is found on the other train. Miss Marple does believe her, of course, and deduces that the body must have been thrown out the train window. She even manages to figure out that it must have been thrown out onto the sprawling grounds of an old estate, and she then engages her brilliant, 30-ish friend, Lucy Eylesbarrow, to infiltrate the grand home of the prominent family who owns the land, find the body, and help solve the murder. Christie perfects her writing “tone” in this story, I think – not too dark, not too light. A perfect “Malice Domestic”.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Audiobook performed by Joan Hickson3.5** Originally published in the United States as: [What Mrs McGillicuddy Saw. The story begins when Mrs McGillicuddy witnessed a murder on a passing train. She reports it to the authorities, but as there has been no body found, and no woman reported missing, they dismiss her story as active imagination. But her friend Miss Jane Marple knows that Mrs McGillicuddy did not invent the story, and she is determined to solve the mystery.This is a great cozy mystery, featuring a fine cast of suspects and amateur sleuths. Miss Marple employs the assistance of the very capable Lucy Eyelesbarrow, a young woman who is smart and steadfast. Together, they are a force to be reckoned with. Having deduced that the body must have been thrown from the train in the neighbor of Rutherford Hall, Miss Marple sends her to fill an open position at the Crackenthorpe’s estate. Lucy becomes Miss Marple’s legs, eyes and ears, gaining entrance where Miss Marple cannot, and reporting back on what she’s observed. She also attracts more than one suitor…. but nevermind about that. Joan Hickson - the marvelous actress who played Miss Marple in the television series – is absolutely pitch perfect narrating the audio book. 5 stars for her performance. Brava!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Mrs McGillicuddy sees a women being murder on a train but no one believes her, with the exception of her friend Jane Marple. When the body doesn't turn up Miss Marple enlists the help of Lucy Eylesbarrow to find the body and discover just who murdered the woman and why. This is classic Christie complete with red herrings and misdirection and the revelation of the murderer is a complete surprise - and I love how Miss Marple manages to identify him.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Oh the end is so good, I actually never expected that. Clever Miss Marple. Good premise, too. Sadly, I didn't really believe in the family drama, it was too contrived and felt very forced. Besides, Lucy would have been an interesting character if she hadn't been so unrealistic - in class-ridden England, I have trouble believing such a character would exist. I could feel that Christie needed someone to investigate instead of Miss Marple and then had to come up with Lucy when it should have been the other way around. I'm frankly disappointed in the story for the beginning and end were really above the rest.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This late Miss Marple novel is a fine one. One of Miss Marple’s matronly, clear-eyed friends witnesses what can only be a murder on a train running parallel to her own. No one takes her really seriously except Miss Marple, but who better to engineer a subtle investigation that roots out the sordid truth of this crime?Christie is in fine form here, with a classic manor house setup, a trio of unsavory brothers filling out the suspect line, and a good surprise ending that’s not too contrived. Recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    One of the classics -- I've probably read it two or three times, since as Ogden Nash once said, "One Christie book is as good as a lib'ry." Other than Murder on the Orient Express and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, I can never remember whodunit!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fun Christie, the plot seems to get more complicated when really, as Miss Marple insists, it's all rather simple.Mrs. McGillicuddy saw a man murder a woman on a train on a parallel track while traveling to see her friend Jane Marple. The people with the railway and at the police do follow-up, but there is no body, and it is possible she had a dream or didn't see exactly what she thinks she did. But Miss Marple knows her friend, and while there are people who make things up and don't know exactly what they saw, she trusts that Mrs. McGillicuddy is right. With some maps and simple logic, she identifies where the body probably is. Then she enlists a very capable domestic consultant to get a job in the house on that land and search for the body.We meet some interesting characters in the family living in that house, including two teenage boys who find it just smashing that a body has been found. But once someone has murdered once, it's too easy to murder again. Now Miss Marple must find the truth. Classic Christie.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    While the train that is taking her to visit her friend Miss Marple slows & stops at a curve.... another train in passing also slows & stops at the same curve... Mrs McGillicuddy looks out and sees a man strangling a woman..... Although she reports it to the porter & train station, no one believes her. Miss Marple believes her and reports it to the police.... but not only is there no report of a missing/murdered woman... one can find a body.

    Her insatiable curiosity aroused, Miss Marple makes discreet inquiries... maps of the train lines, train timetables, what is on that piece of land, etc. Then Miss Marple hires Miss Lucy (a most efficient & sought after) to work at the manor (snoop around the grounds) where the train lines curve.

    Lucy is happily ensconced working for the Crakenthorp family: Luther (patriarch & tightwad); Emma (his devoted daughter); Brian Easterly (son-in-law & widower); sons Harold (bad business deals), Alfred (shady character), & Cedric (laid back artist); and a good-natured grand-son & his school chum Stoddart-West (help Lucy search for clues). The good Doctor has eyes for Emma...

    The murdered woman, soon found by Lucy, is hidden away in an old sarcophagus in the now disused long barn and is believed to be Martine, a French woman who may or may have not been married to the Crackenthorp eldest son (killed in WWII)....

    All along during family gatherings there have been instances of poisonings and now both Alfred & Harold succumb....... While the real Martine (now Stoddart-West) shows up to clear her name......

    Very well thought out plot, good red herrings, a fine (but understated) romance, and strong likable women characters.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Typical Agatha Christie murder mystery. Not so great on audio. The reader isn't good at differentiating voices, and because there's a lot of unmarked dialogue, it gets difficult to distinguish who's saying what -- or even when one person has stopped talking and the other person has started. Better off reading these in print, if you can.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Another excellent Miss Marple story beautifully narrated :)
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I forget about Agatha Christie's books and when I read one I remember why they are still being read today. They are good! This is one of Miss Marple's books. Her friend has seen a murder on a train but no one believes her. It is up to Miss Marple to find the body and the murderer.I enjoyed this book. I tried to figure it out but was wrong on the culprit. I liked how different people were purposed as the culprit, each with a motive. The story moves rapidly. I liked Alexander and the women in the book. The men left much to be desired. The plot was believable. I will be reading more by Agatha Christie.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The 7th in the Miss Marple series (of the novels; I don't count the collections of short stories here), one of the better ones I've read so far. Actually, I have read all of these eons ago, but it's been so very long, I've quite forgotten them all. So I'm rereading them and it's like reading for the first time. I liked this installment, and I'm looking forward to finding the dvd so I can see it played out.A Mrs. Elspeth McGillicuddy is returning home after a long shopping day and takes a seat in the first class section of the train. She falls asleep for a while, wakes up, and as she does so, a train passes by on a parallel track. She looks up just in time to see a man strangling a woman, but she only sees him from the back. She reports it to one of the train conductors, but he thinks she's imagined it -- after all, when he looks at the magazine she's reading, right there is a picture of a man strangling a woman. She writes down the info, however, and turns it in at the station when she arrives. Her next stop is to Miss Jane Marple, to whom she relates the story. Of course Miss Marple believes her, and does some sleuthing of her own, after the papers fail to report a dead woman left on a train. Finally figuring out where the body could have been dumped from the train, Miss Marple hires a young housekeeper to take a position at Rutherford Hall, which lies close to the train tracks at the very spot where Miss Marple deduces the body may have been ditched. From there, it's a case filled with motives, red herrings, and suspects. I did not guess the murderer at all, which always pleases me. Recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An elderly lady sees a murder committed on a train passing by. She reports it, but no one believes her. She tells her friend, another elderly lady. The authorities investigate, but no body turns up. Did the killer get away with murder? Not with Miss Marple on the case. A fine mystery indeed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When Mrs. McGillicuddy wakes from a nap while travelling on a train she looks out the window and sees a man strangling a woman on an adjacent train running parallel to her own. She doesn’t see the murderer’s face, just the back of him. After reporting this to both the train officials and the police, she tells her tale to her friend, Miss Jane Marple. Dame Agatha did it again, I was sure I had figured out who the murderer was, but Miss Marple, in top form, pointed to someone else, and, of course, she had the right answer. 4:50 From Paddington was a fast and fun read with a classic country house setting, a surplus of suspects and the delightful Miss Marple all adding to the enjoyment.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    More fun from the mistress of crime, love the super efficient Lucy Eylesbarrow (what a name!)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    3.5 stars When a friend of Miss Marple's, Mrs. McGillicuddy, is on a train, she looks over as another train is running parallel to hers, going the same direction, and sees a man strangling a woman. When she tells someone on the train what she saw, he doesn't believe her. When she relays the story to Miss Marple, they expect to see something in the papers about it, but there's nothing. So... what really happened on that train? Miss Marple will get to the bottom of it. Ah, I do like Miss Marple! Although I've not read a lot of Agatha Christie, of what I have read, I prefer Miss Marple to Poirot every time, and this is no exception. I listened to the audio of this one, and thought the narrator was very good. An older, British lady – it fit perfectly.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is one of the better of the second rank of Christie novels for me, beginning with the dramatic incident of an old lady on a train (not Miss Marple herself, as shown in the film version starring Margaret Rutherford) witnessing a woman being strangled in a train on a parallel track going in the same direction. The initial disappearance of the body is resolved, narrowing the place of its discovery to a remote house inhabited by an extremely cantankerous old man and his largely rather unpleasant offspring. The usual red herrings are present of course, and the final resolution and identification of the murderer only comes in the final few pages, with no previously laid clues that I could see. Published in 1957, this contains some of the attitudes of the time, especially the simultaneously amusing and rather alarming stereotyping by everyone including the police, for example, of bohemian types as being likely murderers, and of the murder of a French woman being much less important than the murder of an English woman. A good and well constructed story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Huzzah, I guessed the identity of the murderer correctly. I hit on his identity fairly early, when only one of the three murders had been committed. I didn't know anything else. Sadly to say, I couldn't guess the identity of the strangled lady. What propelled this book to 5 stars is the enormous interest I had for the first murder, which was evil in character but also very exciting to read about. Then there's the two basic murders of the brothers. They catch you unawares. They highlight the first murder and the final solution provided by Miss Marple seems to take too long.Miss Jane Marple has the knack of solving cases which baffle Scotland Yard officials. How she does this may be explained, but cannot be taught. That's why we want to read every story of hers. People as old as Marple, who live in the same place and never travel much, don't have anything new to say. The quirky ability to reason sets her apart from other people of her gender, age, and class.She gets help in this case via Lucy Eyelesbarrow - for me an unpronounceable name- who becomes her eyes and her brawn. Miss Marple doesn't have the body, or the opportunity to infiltrate the sprawling household where she expects a body is hidden. I thought all this arrangement was clumsy but necessary. Anyway I was soon engrossed in the intrigue. The author has the guts to prolong the suspense regarding the identity of the first body. The fact that she does this with ease while obscuring from the stage the presence of Miss Marple and instead concentrating on Lucy and Inspector Craddock, betrays her confidence in her writing.Now, I'm wondering that this fragile, flickering, growing habit of mine to guess Agatha Christie's puzzlers can be strengthened. One trick is to eliminate most of the people who are pointedly probed as suspects. That's how partly I arrived at the correct solution. But another trick is to take a fact provided by the author. A big fact, an important fact that may be true or be a case of misdirection. You then have to decide if this important fact is true or if it's a red herring. Chances are that it will be untrue. If it's untrue then go against the direction to which the author is slyly trying to shoo you. It worked for me for this book. It may work regularly.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Classic Agatha Christie with a multitude of suspects. Miss Marple's friend Ellspeth McGillicuddy glimpses what she beleives is the murder of a young woman in a passing train. Marple and friend set up to convince the police, find the body and of course solve the murder. The characters are typical Christie and well developed. The plot becomes more intricate as further deaths occur. The main protagonist is an extremely efficient maid for hire, Lucy Eylesbarrow, great character. The solution to the murder is quite interesting and I completely guessed wrong! I do enjoy a Christie novel.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    What's not to like about Agatha Christie mysteries? I especially like the Miss Marple ones. I like it that one can only guess who is the murderer, because of the last minute facts that are presented to the reader. Of course I always do- and I guessed correctly! (Maybe I'm reading too many Christies?) Like other reviewers on LT, I took a great liking to Lucy Eylesbarrow.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    There are some interesting aspects of the setting of this novel that place it quite firmly in the mid to late 1950s. The oldest son in the Crackenthorpe family was killed in the war and there is some speculation that he might have had a son who would now be 15 or 16 years old. The house in which most of the action takes place, Rutherford Hall, has seen better days: the grounds are very neglected and there used to be a lot more staff to run it.There are a number of references to Miss Marple being frail and elderly but it doesn't stop her from undertaking quite extraordinary train journeys to establish a timeline for the murder that her friend Elspeth McGillicuddy witnessed. There are also quite a number of references to both Miss Marple and Mrs McGillicuddy carrying out a "duty" in tracking down the facts and culprit in the murder. There's a sense that they have old fashioned values that the younger generation don't share, although we are offered some hope in the "boys" who sleuth the grounds of Rutherford Hall enthusiastically. There's a sense too of the loss that the war caused - the death of the elder son, the poverty that followed the war, the physical/architectural structures damaged and never repaired, the disillusionment, marriages that never took place etc.There's romance in the air too in this novel, a bit unusual for Miss Marple, but there are times when she appears to be playing the matchmaker.I thoroughly enjoyed this read. By comparison with modern day books it is quite short but you'd be wrong if you thought the brevity came at the expense of character development and setting. There are plenty of red herrings - I'd forgotten the solution and it came as a surprise.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A friend of Miss Marple witnesses a murder on a train next to hers. The intrigue, red herrings and sleuthing swiftly follow.Another good romp from Dame Agatha.