sleeping murders by agatha christie review

A question which frequently kept coming back to me, was what it would have been liked if this book had been published when it was originally written, i.e. If you haven’t read this one yet then you are in for a treat. At times Miss Marple may seem to be a little in the background but fans of this character will trust that she is slowly gathering her clues for a dramatic conclusion.įirst things first this was a re-read that I hugely enjoyed. Whilst Miss Marple advises Gwenda and Giles to leave things alone, to ‘let sleeping murder lie,’ our two accidental/amateur sleuths take no heed and concerned for their safety Miss Marple also becomes involved. Yet I think this is because Christie wants us to focus on a different aspect of the mystery and in fact I would say that this background information in some respects is supposed to wrong foot us. This is a mystery where we get a lot of background information early on, which is unusual, as often mysteries avoid such a move. It’s not surprising that Gwenda thinks she is going mad, but thankfully Miss Marple is in the wings to save the day in more ways than one. This vision is of a young woman strangled in her new home’s hallway, the killer not really visible aside from their ‘grey, wrinkled – not hands – monkey’s paws…’ and Gwenda for some inexplicable reason knows the woman was called Helen. Things come to a head when Gwenda has a terrifying vision whilst watching a production of The Duchess of Malfi. But as she goes around the house and once she has bought it and begins alterations, an eerie sense of familiarity with the place comes over her, along with bouts of incomprehensible panic. After a week she finds her house, a Victorian villa on the road to the coastal resort Dillmouth.

She has recently married and is now house hunting in the South of England, whilst her husband Giles is still abroad. The book begins with Gwenda Reed, having arrived in the UK from New Zealand. Brad already pipped me to the post at looking at this novel so do check out his thoughts on it from last week, along with other Helen filled Christie stories. This week I am looking at Christie’s last published Miss Marple novel, Sleeping Murder (1976), a story I have always enjoyed a great deal and in keeping with the Tuesday Night Bloggers theme this month, there is a key character called Helen. Earlier last month one of our founder Tuesday Night Bloggers members, Helen Szamuely, died and as a tribute to her the Tuesday Night Bloggers are featuring posts this month on some of her great interests in life: Europe, History and Russia.

Sleeping murders by agatha christie review