Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple, #12) in Reading the Detectives

Sep 14, 2020 Susan in NC rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, audiobook, kindle, my-library, library-book, christie, 25detectiveschallenge

7/2025 reread: upped my rating to 5 stars, I really enjoyed my reread, listening along to the excellent narration of Stephanie Cole.

9/2020: Excellent outing with Miss Marple, I understood this to be her last mystery as it says on the cover of my paper back, and I wanted to reread it before I watched my DVD version. I have since learned from GR reviews that although it was published in 1976, this was actually in the middle of Miss Marple’s detecting career, written around the end of World War II. 7/2025 reread: upped my rating to 5 stars, I really enjoyed my reread, listening along to the excellent narration of Stephanie Cole.

9/2020: Excellent outing with Miss Marple, I understood this to be her last mystery as it says on the cover of my paper back, and I wanted to reread it before I watched my DVD version. I have since learned from GR reviews that although it was published in 1976, this was actually in the middle of Miss Marple’s detecting career, written around the end of World War II.

So, in this book, one of my very favorite detectives, Miss Marple, is still active - gardening, knitting, traveling to first London, then the seaside, all the while asking probing questions as only a fluffy old lady can do. The difference being, of course, that behind the fluffy old lady act is a razor sharp intellect, Victorian moral certitude and what another character in a previous case once called “a mind like a sink trap”! As Miss Marple tells her detecting partners in this case, Gwenda and Giles, at the end of the story, “You believed what he said. It really is very dangerous to believe people. I never have for years.” I love it!

So, the story opens with sweet young newlywed Gwenda Reed getting off the boat from New Zealand in Plymouth; husband Giles is to follow, but she is to look for a suitable house. Her remit is fairly wide, as she’s never been in England. Her English husband suggests the south of England as a pleasant place to settle down.

After a few misses Gwenda finds the perfectly lovely house Hillside in Dillmouth; no view of the sea, but delightful, and she feels very at-home in it. She buys it and begins renovations and decorating, and is very pleased - but unaccountably gripped by terror when she stands at the top of the stairs looking into the hall below. The familiarity - remembering doors where walls now stand, stairs down to the garden no longer there - begins to frighten Gwenda, she’s afraid she’s going mad. She takes a break to visit London friends, who introduce her to Miss Marple, and take her to see a play. During a climactic strangling scene, Gwenda screams and runs out - she later tells Miss Marple she suddenly envisioned a young woman strangled at the bottom of the stairs of her new home, Hillside.

La Marple is very sensible and offers a comforting solution, which turns out to be true, but now the newlyweds feel they should investigate the 18-year-old murder that happened in their house. Miss Marple is at her solemn and wise best, and worried - she urges Gwen and Giles to let sleeping murder lie, but of course they don’t listen, and what first seems like an exciting game gets real fast, as the likable young couple meet the still-living characters and learn the sad facts of the long-ago tragedy.

Miss Marple engineers a trip to Dillmouth to be on hand to advise and consult, and plays an active role directing the investigation in her quiet way. All around a very exciting, satisfying cold case murder mystery - I first read it decades ago, but as I read I remembered whodunnit, but it was still exciting and entertaining. I enjoyed listening along to the audiobook with Stephanie Cole narrating, but remembered her distinctive voice from the British sitcom “Waiting for God”, and kept waiting for her to curse out Tom! But she did a very good job with accents and voices.

Now I’m off to watch my DVD version with my very favorite Marple, Joan Hickson. And next time I decide to read through the entire series, now I know to put this one somewhere in the middle, not at the end! ...more

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May 24, 2018 Bronwyn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, european, novels, mystery-detective-suspense, by-women, author-a-i, 2018-reads, do-not-own, title-s-z-and-number

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

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Dec 11, 2011 Jan C rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: re-read, gr-group-read, mystery, 2011

Always an enjoyable read.

There is no real indication why this was Miss Marple's last case. She doesn't die or anything. At one point, she looks pale and one of the charaters, Gwenda or Giles - who do much of the legwork on the detecting part of the program, asks if she's all right and she indicates that she is ok ... but maybe she isn't and just doesn't want to share her illness with us. She didn't really need to go to the shore but she finagled her doctor into ordering it.

This was actually one ...more

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Feb 08, 2017 Nanosynergy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british, series, mysteries-thrillers-espionage, 2017read, fiction, reviewed, fiction-1970s

When Gwenda and her husband move into their new home, she has frightening memories of seeing a woman strangled in their home - yet she has no memory of ever having been there before. Miss Marple helps them unravels these mysterious memories.

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Mar 04, 2009 Laura Anne rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, british-isles

2024 Series Re-read: Written in the 1940s but published 30 years later, this one is a classic. I especially love the opening chapters: the descriptions of the house and the introduction of the mystery.

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May 13, 2022 Anna Adams rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Can't even guess how many times I've read this--my favorite Agatha Christie. Still my favorite! I don't even know why. Bit of a new-married romance, and I happened to read this the first time when I was newly married. Love a house with spookiness and a mystery that actually makes me a little sick at the cruelty. ...more

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Aug 04, 2017 Barbara rated it really liked it

As a youth, I thought Agatha Christie dry! I was really missing the essence. She is the soul of wit, understatement, quiet and hidden brilliance. Revisiting her is a blast. This was especially good as an audiobook with a cast.

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Dec 13, 2017 Stephanie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-cozy

I very much enjoyed this book. I understand it was published in 1976, but written during WW2. Most of the book was simply trying to prove whether a murder actually occurred!

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