Clever

HH and I watched Joan Hickson as Miss Marple last night. I especially liked her in that role, but all three of the newest actresses are good. They each put a different spin on the part.

We’ve watched repeats of a lot of them, and I know I’ve seen The Murder at the Vicarage before, but it was so long ago, I forgot a lot of it, especially who the killers were. I’m not trying to give anything away, but this probably will. The thing that amazed me is how well Agatha Christie uses two suspects working together to commit murder. She’s a master of it. In Evil Under the Sun and Death on the Nile, the two suspects time things out so that each one has an alibi in the time frame of what happened. She outdoes herself in Murder on the Orient Express where the victim is stabbed over and over again.

As always, with Christie, there are interesting people to point fingers at, and every little clue plays into the murder somewhere. This time, the detective on the case is Detective Slack, who hates letting anyone interfere in his investigations. He thinks of Miss Marple as a pesky nuisance. His assistant secretly enjoys her.

A side bonus for me was the vicar’s wife. She’s young, pretty, and a little eccentric. She’s a wonderful, generous person, but when she gets bored listening to village gossip, she’s not above making up a tall tale or two. Some of them are doozies!