Miss Marple's Debut: Agatha Christie, The Murder at the Vicarage (1930)

 Agatha Christie. The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) The novel that introduces Miss Marple, presented here as much more fluttery and muddled than she was to become. But the streak of ruthlessness is already present. Colonel Protheroe, the victim, is a nasty piece of work, a self-righteous bully, but that’s insufficient grounds for murdering him. Again we have a bad husband, a suffering wife, and a dysfunctional family. His death is carefully planned. It’s the planning that does in the murderers. In many of her stories, Christie shows that the more elaborate the plan, the more likely it is to go wrong somewhere. In several stories, Poirot remarks that the simple, spur-of-the moment murder is much harder to solve, because its very simplicity means there is little to go on. One of Christie’s best. **** (2010)