Marple: Twelve New Mysteries by Agatha Christie

 

Thank you, Partner @bibliolifestyle @williammorrowbooks for a review copy for Marple:  Twelve New Mysteries by Agatha Christie.

What character would you like to see new stories/books/movies about?

Marple is twelve new stories by twelve modern authors featuring Agatha Christie’s famous sleuth, Miss Marple.  The authors include:  Naomi Alderman, Leigh Bardugo, Alyssa Cole, Lucy Foley, Elly Griffiths, Natalie Haynes, Jean Kwok, Val McDermid, Karen M. McManus, Dreda Say Mitchell, Kate Mosse, and Ruth Ware.  I’ve read and enjoyed other books by many of these authors.

 I read Marple one story at a time to savor the new mysteries.  I was hoping I would be able to pick out one story that I loved the most, but I enjoyed them all.   That was great to me as often in collections some stories are of higher quality than the rest, but in this collection, they are ALL entertaining. It was wonderful to get new Marple stories.  I loved the callbacks to original stories and that her nephew Raymond and his wife Joan popped up a lot. 

Miss Marple had adventures in a lot of new settings in many different decades.  A common theme was that Miss Marple is the kind of old woman that people overlooked or talked down to, but she was really the sharpest one of all.  I also enjoyed that there was diversity in the characters in the stories as well.

As an environmental engineer I loved this exchange in Miss Marple Takes Manhattan:

“I thought you were lying in a gutter somewhere!” Raymond Exclaimed.

“The sewer system wouldn’t allow for that,” she said.

Marple is the October selection for the #ReadChristie2022 Challenge.  The theme this month is “a story with multiple settings.”  This book certainly had multiple settings!

Other Favorite Quotes:

“Miss Marple sighed.  It wasn’t the first and it wouldn’t be the last time she was dismissed as a silly old woman with one foot in the grave, and she reflected, it was in such strong contrast to the way Miss Bella was treated by her Caribbean community.” A Deadly Wedding by Dreda Say Mitchell.

“And do you know the worst part, Jane?  He’s right.  Age is cruel, and crueler still to women.  A woman becomes a ghost when she stops being worth looking at.” – The Disappearance by Leigh Bardugo

Review Copy from William Morrow Books as part of the Bibliolifestyle Book Tour.  Thank-you! I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.