by Agatha Christie
First published 1971
It's been quite a while since I posted any reviews here on the blog. I've been reading, and posting reviews in other places, but for some reason I've been neglecting the blog. So I thought I might start trying to do a little catch-up work and just say a few words about some of the books I've read during the first half of this year.
And I suppose a good place to start would be at the beginning, with the first book I read back in January.
In this next-to-last Miss Marple novel by Agatha Christie, Jane Marple receives a posthumous request from recently-deceased millionaire Jason Rafiel to investigate a mystery. If she accepts the job and solves the mystery, she'll receive a legacy of £20,000. She's met Rafiel before — they worked together on an earlier mystery (which you can read about in Christie's A Caribbean Mystery, from 1964), so she knows he's eccentric but reliable.
Problem is, Mr. Rafiel doesn't leave any information about the mystery — no clues, no suspect or suspects, no advice about where to start. All she knows is that he wants her to go on a coach tour of English gardens and country houses, which he has arranged and paid for. Now in her eighties, Miss Marple is a bit reluctant at first, but ultimately can't resist the intriguing challenge.
This was a fun read and a good book to start the year with. And though it's hard to improve on Agatha Christie, I think this would have been an even better read (maybe even 5 out of 5 stars) if there hadn't been so much repetition throughout the book. It seemed like every few pages, we'd get another summary of the story so far, or recap of the assignment Miss Marple was working on. That got very tedious very quickly. But any Miss Marple is better than no Miss Marple, and I'm very sad to realize that I've almost finished the series! (Well, finished with the novels, anyway.) Guess I'll have to start over from the beginning.
2021 Calendar of Crime Reading Challenge.
2021 Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge.
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