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"Do you think a murderer ought to be a happy man?"
Miss Marple coughed. "Well, they usually have been, in my experience."
"I don't suppose your experience has gone very far," said Mr. Rafiel.
In this assumption, as Miss Marple could have told him, he was wrong. But she forbore to contest his statement. Gentlemen, she knew, did not like to be put right in their facts."
- A Caribbean Mystery, p. 113
The Sum of It:
Nephew Raymond really is so very generous to his Aunt Jane. In this book, one of Agatha's last few featuring Miss Marple, our little old lady of mystery is quite out of her element at a tropical Caribbean resort, where Nephew Raymond has dispatched her for her health. Back home, everybody from the ladies down the street to Scotland Yard know of her prowess as a detective, but here, she's just a "fluffy old lady" who knits and prattles on about the weather.
That is, until another elderly visitor to the resort drops dead, presumably of heart failure, until Miss Marple and the resort's doctor figure out that he didn't actually have any heart problems, and the young lady who cleans his room points out that the heart pills on his bathroom sink that substantiated the "heart failure" diagnosis were never there before, and actually belonged to another guest. The day of his death, the old fella had been talking loudly to Miss Marple about a murderer he had a snapshot of, but just when he pulled it out of his wallet he saw someone behind Miss Marple and shoved it back in and changed the subject #MYSTERY. The old man's death, and subsequent murder investigation, put everyone on edge, especially the hotel's proprietress, Molly Kendal.
When Molly, who's been having nightmares, finds another person connected to the case with a knife in her back, things go from bad to worse. At this point, despite people constantly dismissing her, only Miss Marple can figure out what's going on, and she enlists the island's other most senior resident, Mr. Rafiel, to add some credibility to her deductions. They do the math, and come down to the surprising fact of the real killer not a moment too soon!
The YOA Treatment:
Part of the delight of a Miss Marple book is observing her in her element, the small town, country life, where her constant memory of the oddities of neighbors makes her crime solving ability unparalleled. So, this book, set in a random tropical setting, feels a bit out of the wheelhouse, like one of those newer Nancy Drew books written by Carolyn Keene's ghostwriter where Nancy and her pals zoom around a lake on jetskis. That said, this one was stronger than I was afraid it was going to be, in terms of the mystery! I thought I remembered the killer from seeing the television version of A Caribbean Mystery (which is actually pretty good!), but the book still held my interest and kept me turning the pages til my hunches were confirmed!
There were a lot more aspects of this book that felt like callbacks to Miss Marple's Victorian upbringing than I remember in others, from her lamenting a woman on the island who doesn't present herself as well as she "ought to", and how she really ought to marry again, to some unfortunate lingo and characterization of the people of color who live on the island #CRINGEWORTHY. Both Agatha and Miss Marple were getting on up there in age by the time A Caribbean Mystery was published, so perhaps that explains some of it.
While this isn't my favorite Miss Marple, I was pleased to see Agatha could still spin quite a yarn as we move into the later years of her career.
Bon voyage!
- E.
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