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In 1927, the world was introduced to St. Mary Mead's most famous spinster, Miss Jane Marple, in a short story published in The Royal Magazine. It would be another three years before she appeared in a full-length novel, The Murder at the Vicarage. Miss Marple] knew that the younger people around her assumed that she had already crumbled and it did appeal to her as it would be so much easier than changing but she was self-aware. Miss Marple understood that she was not the crumbling type. She would have to go eventually as all people do but she hoped it would be in a blaze of glory like the burnt out buildings they past." While some of the stories may have been “fine”, all this collection of stories did was prove that Miss Marple could only be written by Agatha Christie.
Her father is Geoffrey Alderman, an academic who has specialised in Anglo-Jewish history. She and her father were interviewed in The Sunday Times "Relative Values" feature on 11 February 2007.[2]The audiobook is read by an exciting cast of 12 actors, including Adrian Scarborough, Adjoa Andoh, Ramon Tikaram and Miriam Margoyles. Find out more
Ms. Marple's Christmas" by Ruth Ware (3 stars)-I honestly got very confused reading this. It didn't make a lot of sense. But we get to see the Bantrys again in this one.Authors featured in this collection, 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. A brand new collection of short stories featuring the Queen of Crime’s legendary detective Jane Marple, penned by twelve remarkable bestselling and acclaimed authors. This book will introduce the character to a whole new generation. Each author included in the new publication will reimagine Christie’s Marple through their own unique perspective while staying true to the hallmarks of a traditional mystery. Jane Marple is a famous fictional detective and one of my favorites, so I had to dive in and catch up with her through the words of these twelve authors. I love how Christie always combined light and dark, had very dysfunctional families, and always had a motive unique to the character. Christie's novels are unique and just FUN with that feel good feeling. Miss Marple enjoys herself tremendously in New York in Miss Marple Takes Manhattan by Alyssa Cole, where the redoubtable spinster unravels the skullduggery taking place at a theatre adaptation of one of her nephew Raymond’s novels. In The Unravelling by Natalie Haynes, Miss Marple sorts through a sad tale of the fallout from men returning from war.
Read by Alex Kingston, Adrian Scarborough, Adjoa Andoh, Imogen Stubbs, Alison Steadman, Jodhi May, Chipo Chung, Cathy Tyson, Ramon Tikaram, Tanya Reynolds, Celia Imrie and Miriam Margolyes. In The Jade Empress by Jean Kwok, Miss Marple solves a murder on a cruise ship to Hong Kong with shades of A Caribbean Mystery in the set-up. Dreda Say Mitchell’s A Deadly Wedding Day finds Miss Marple teaming up with her Caribbean equivalent to solve a death at an aristocratic wedding in England. Murder at the Villa Rosa by Elly Griffiths sets up a crime writer at an Italian hotel filled with people who might be characters from a crime novel, including Miss Marple, naturally.
🍪 Privacy & Transparency
In Miss Marple’s Christmas by Ruth Ware (4.5/5) the theft of a valuable string of pearls during a Christmas gathering at Gossington Hall puts a damper on the festivities. This story is truly reminiscent of Agatha Christie's signature style in terms of a closed room setting, multiple suspects, and a surprising revelation. A Deadly Wedding Day by Dreda Say Mitchell (4.5/5), has Miss Marple teaming up with her friend Miss Bella whose niece’s wedding becomes the scene of a murder. In The Jade Empress by Jean Kwok (4/5) we find Miss Marple on a cruise to Hong Kong during which two murders occur and the daughter of one of the victims is the accused. It is up to Miss Marple to figure out what truly happened. In The Murdering Sort by Karen M. McManus (4.5/5), Miss Marple and her great–grand-niece Nicola West work together to solve the mystery behind the murder of the grandfather of one of Nicola’s school friends. This story is set in the United States. Although the amateur sleuth of more mature years is now a common feature of crime fiction, Miss Marple was a marked departure from the popular image of a detective when first introduced. As an elderly unmarried female of moderate means, she was regularly overlooked and underestimated, allowing her to pass unnoticed and use her remarkable powers of observation and inference to ferret out the guilty party whenever a crime occurred in her vicinity. In addition, she had an unrivalled understanding of human nature, which she developed through spending nearly her whole life in the same small village. In any book such as this, there are inevitably variations in quality and viewpoint. I think only Val McDermid attempts to recreate Christie’s writing style and she does it very successfully. Lucy Foley sets up a spooky atmosphere with her village mummers and of the stories that have Miss Marple out of her usual element, I think Miss Marple Takes Manhattan is the most fun. The Jade Empress was entertaining, but my credulity was stretched too far by the concept of Miss Marple joining in with Tai Chi. All in all, this is an entertaining collection of extended universe Miss Marple stories and fans of the original are likely to enjoy the output of newer crime writers playing in the Marple sandbox. While it may offer little in the way of startling revelations, where Worsley’s book excels is in bringing a broader historical perspective to Christie’s life and work, and her enthusiasm is infectious. She makes the case that, despite the author’s outwardly conservative views, Christie “ could be described as a ‘covert’ feminist”, and her clinching evidence is the enduringly popular character of Jane Marple; the later Marple novels “all express Agatha’s view of a Britain that has gone wrong, but in which a single old lady can still be a force for good”. Miss Marple Takes Manhattan" by Alyssa Cole (1.5 stars)-This didn't work at all. Cole does include Miss Marple's nephew (Raymond) and his wife (Joan)but other than that, it didn't read at all like a Miss Marple book. The resolution to this didn't work for me at all either.
The majority of Miss Marple’s original cases took place in the domestic sphere, in houses and stately homes to which she was invited by her many old friends and relatives. The crimes involved were often examples of the classic ‘country house mystery’ that Agatha Christie excelled at crafting, and a number of the contributors to Marple have followed a similar approach, also to excellent effect. For instance, in The Second Murder at the Vicarage, Val McDermid pays tribute to the first novel to feature Miss Marple and has long-suffering clergyman Reverend Leonard Clement discover the body of his former maid in the kitchen of the vicarage. A Deadly Wedding Day was the first story where I actually felt anything for the characters. It's read by Cathy Tyson, and she has a voice that's just made for audiobooks. I could listen to her forever. My only niggle was that in all the adaptations (audiobook, radio dramatisation and TV adaptations) of A Caribbean Mystery, the island of St Honoré is pronounced as "Hono-ray". Here, it's pronounced "Hono-ree". It's a VERY minor point but it did annoy me.
I enjoyed the writing of each author, and I appreciated their creativity and their effort to pay an homage to one of my top favourite authors. Per usual, I am going to rate each story individually so you all can see how I got to my group rating for the collection.
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