Miss Marple Hits the Beach: A Caribbean Mystery | 1964

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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. 

An Affair to Remember: Sparkling Cyanide | 1944

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"Rosemary, that's for remembrance." - Sparkling Cyanide, p. 37

We have heartily enjoyed spending the month of July reading along with our friends @maidensofmurder over on Instagram! Thank you so much again, Maidens, for this opportunity to enjoy Agatha Christie together!

The Sum of It:
Our story begins with a group of party guests somewhat guiltily remembering a dinner they all attended nearly a year before...one that ended rather deadly...

Rosemary Barton and her older husband, George, had invited a group of pals for a night out on the town. Everyone seemed to be having a great time getting their drinking and dancing on, until Rosemary took a sip of her champagne and promptly dropped dead. The whisper going around was that Rosemary was depressed after a bout of the flu, and so she probably decided a nice evening out with her friends and loved ones was the perfect time to kill herself. Husband George and Sister Iris, obvi pretty torn up, accept the suicide theory, especially when Iris finds a letter Rosemary wrote to her on-the-side Mystery Boyfriend, showing that old Rosemary would not be too happy about the idea of said boyfriend breaking things off.

HOWEVER, things take a turn when George receives an anonymous letter suggesting that Rosemary didn't commit suicide, and that one of their dinner guests actually killed her! What better way to get to the bottom of his wife's death than to throw ANOTHER dinner party at the same restaurant with the same dinner guests and set a trap to catch the killer! Things go horribly wrong yet again when at awkward dinner number two, GEORGE drops dead in the exact same manner as Rosemary! #shockedface #didntseethatcoming. Did he know too much? Was he on the right track of the killer? Was he actually the intended victim the first time around!?

Colonel Race is brought on to the scene to try and puzzle out who keeps killing Bartons. Throw into the mix a lot of rigamarole with inheriting large sums of money, a politically power-hungry couple with some serious secrets, a baddie cousin in the Argentine, and a secretary in love with her boss, and you have one delicious #MYSTERY.

The YOA Treatment:
Overall, we enjoyed this book. It's always a bit of a bummer to read an Agatha book without Poirot or Miss Marple, but Colonel Race does a very decent, albeit rather forgettable, job of solving the crime with the help of Iris's boyfriend, Anthony Browne. Both of us were actually (FOR ONCE!) able to spot the culprit early on due to some pretty hefty page time dedicated to a certain character's feelings. Emily was on the right track from the start with motive, although Audrey had a little harder time working it all out.

One interesting note in this book is the way it builds on Agatha's status as a MAJOR ROMANTIC.  So many of the characters are found to be in different stages of falling in love: love at first sight, realizing you loved someone all along, infatuation, pining quietly, etc. Romance often plays some part in Agatha's novels, but this one particularly showcases it in nearly every character. It's understandable why Agatha took time off in her career from writing crime novels to write a short series of romance novels under the name Mary Westmacott.

We discuss more of our #SPOILERS Sparking Cyanide thoughts and feelings over on the @maidensofmurder account, so if you've read this one, be sure to head over and join in!

-A. & E.