Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie

"Let sleeping murder lie": this is the proverb (a variation on "Let sleeping dogs lie") which is not obeyed by twenty-one-year-old New Zealander Gwenda Reed, who has recently married and now comes to England to settle down there. While her husband, Giles, is out of the country, she buys a house for them and starts recalling memories which make her start to think that perhaps she had lived in the house before. She knows the pattern of the old wallpaper they find on the walls, the location of a now covered over doorway, a set of steps in the garden that are not where they should be, and so on. When she begins to remember seeing someone murdered at the bottom of the staircase however, she is convinced she is going mad. Miss Marple however has an explanation not only for why she may be having these memories but also solves the mystery of the murder victim and her murderer.

Sleeping Murder chronicles Miss Marple’s final case. Although Agatha Christie wrote it before Nemesis, it was not published until after her death in 1976. It is thought to have been written in the early 1940s, although the exact date has been debated

That was a good one. I'm not sure what makes it the last Miss Marple though...

A familiar house
old memories resurface
gullible lovebirds.

I read quite a bit of Agatha Christie as a teenager and was always a fan, but somehow over the years I fell out of those kind of books. I've suddenly felt the urge to begin again, and this was the first one I happened upon, though it turns out it's actually the last Marple book. This doesn't actually play into the narrative at all.

While I was thoroughly engrossed in the story, even though not a whole lot happens, I was let down by the revelation of the killer. I suspected him somewhat throughout (only because of the whole ‘last person you would suspect' cliche) but thought better of it, because it didn't make sense that he would help this couple at all. I mean, why tell them of Lily Kimble's letter to him and her impending visit? He's going to kill her anyway, why not do it discretely?

I also found the Duchess of Malfi quote to be somewhat ridiculous. Now, I knew nothing about the play, but I find it hard to believe that Miss Marple who had just sat through it (and was possibly familiar with it anyway) didn't focus on the quote and it's meaning. In fact, it's not mentioned again at all, until the very end when Marple states that she was stupid for not spotting the significance. She had just watched a play where a brother has his sister killed for marrying a man he doesn't approve of, and she doesn't clue in at all as to how this might be relevant to the case at hand.

Otherwise, I liked it well enough, and am excited to continue catching up with Marple and Poirot.

I am coming very close to the end of reading all of Agatha Christie's mystery novels and short stories in chronological order. This one, I just found out, was written 30 years before it was published, and I must say that I can tell. It has all the form and character of most of Christie's others during her golden years, though it is a tad predictable. Even once I felt I had it all figured out, I still enjoyed reading it. It had a fresh concept and Miss Marple was as fierce as ever. This one also had a lot less ideology forced on you, which is always a plus. Definitely worth a read.