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Sept 25: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) by Agatha Christie
By Susan · 17 posts · 19 views
By Susan · 17 posts · 19 views
last updated 6 hours, 37 min ago
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Sept 25: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) - SPOILER Thread
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By Susan · 13 posts · 22 views
last updated Sep 16, 2025 12:58PM
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What Members Thought
2021 English Mysteries - Miss Marple Group Read
Having read this less than 4 years I was surprised at how little I remembered of the book. Is it age or just the fact that in the intervening years I have read a large number of detective mystery stories. I'm plumping for the latter option. 😊
This book, the first with Miss Marple, is set entirely within St Mary Mead, in fact the vast majority is within 100 yards of The Vicarage, and guess who happens to live next door ? Yes, thats right, the redoubt ...more
Having read this less than 4 years I was surprised at how little I remembered of the book. Is it age or just the fact that in the intervening years I have read a large number of detective mystery stories. I'm plumping for the latter option. 😊
This book, the first with Miss Marple, is set entirely within St Mary Mead, in fact the vast majority is within 100 yards of The Vicarage, and guess who happens to live next door ? Yes, thats right, the redoubt ...more
I pondered (and pondered!) my rating but have decided to go enjoyment and how good this was for the first in a series - The Divine Christie had me completely fooled!
There are faults - too many characters (some very similar) and the characterisation of Miss M is very uneven - she is a right old bat at the start, but by the halfway point she is the amateur sleuth I love. The trademark fluffiness hides great powers of observation and deduction.
Like
there is a lot more humour in this novel than
...more
There are faults - too many characters (some very similar) and the characterisation of Miss M is very uneven - she is a right old bat at the start, but by the halfway point she is the amateur sleuth I love. The trademark fluffiness hides great powers of observation and deduction.
Like
there is a lot more humour in this novel than
...more
Really Miss Marple is rather a dear… I had read this, as well as many other Christie novels, while at university. There is something special about Miss Marple. There is something special about Agatha Christie.
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The very first outing of Miss Marple was quite a good read! She's somewhat in the background for the first 2/3 of the book but then emerges with the solution in that last third. It became clear that Christie was, at this point, feeling her way into the character who would become a major force in her writing career. I'm trying to read these in order to see the development and know I have much to look forward to. After reading this, I watched the Joan Hickson version on DVD, and it confirmed that
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Agatha Christie is one of my all-time favorite authors. I have read almost all of the Hercule Poirot books, but have never tried a Miss Marple title until now. What better place to start than at the beginning? I found the mystery to be a first-rate English cozy. The setting, the characters, the dialogue are all the things I love about Dame Agatha. The one gripe I have is that we don't spend enough time with Miss Marple. The book is narrated by the Vicar, Mr. Clement, with Miss Marple being no mo
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I've been trying to read more Agatha Christie. I've mostly read Poirot books so far with the exception of The Body in the Library which I loved!
For a Miss Marple book, there just wasn't enough Miss Marple. She was like a background character for most of the novel which I found annoying. Maybe it's because it's the first book? But if that is the reason, it's garbage. I did not want to spend nearly 400 pages reading about the vicar.
Of course I'm still planning to read more Miss Marple. Who doesn' ...more
For a Miss Marple book, there just wasn't enough Miss Marple. She was like a background character for most of the novel which I found annoying. Maybe it's because it's the first book? But if that is the reason, it's garbage. I did not want to spend nearly 400 pages reading about the vicar.
Of course I'm still planning to read more Miss Marple. Who doesn' ...more
Jun 16, 2019
Gemima
marked it as to-read
Nov 14, 2021
Wayne Jordaan
marked it as to-read
