The Murder at the Vicarage
1930
- women detectives
- fiction
- classic
- literature
- audiobook
- braile
- dvd
- murder
- mystery
- humour
The story
***Murder at the Vicarage (1930)is the first Miss Marple mystery book by Agatha Christie.*** Miss Jane Marple is a village busybody who applies human nature to crimes. Colonel Protheroe, magistrate universally despised, was shot in his study, unheard. His wife Anne admits newly arrived artist Lawrence Redding is an old flame, and both confess to murder. **The local inspector and Miss Marple sort through to the truth.** ***The murder of Colonel Protheroe shocks the town of St. Mary Mead, where the main entertainment is tea and gossip.*** Among the neighbors of St. Mary Mead, the most meddlesome, observant and shrewd person is Miss Marple. His intervention will be decisive in the resolution of a crime for which there are no suspects. ***Death in the vicarage, published in 1930, was the first appearance of one of the most important characters in the work of Agatha Christie, the spinster and insightful Miss Marple, whose cases have been adapted several times both to the cinema and in Form of television series.***
What it’s like
Crisp, brisk prose with a dry, wry narrator who makes a village tea table feel like a stage set: drawing rooms, vicarage gardens, cups of tea going cold while neighbours trade rumours. The sensory world is domestic and genteel, with chintz, lamplit parlours and the small clatter of English village life, and the mood is cosy, observant and faintly amused rather than frightening. The pace is steady and conversational, built from short dialogue exchanges and a sequence of quiet interviews, with the tension coming from close attention to what people say and leave unsaid. The death itself happens offstage and is reported plainly; violence is minimal, with no gore and no sexual content, and the darkness stays at the level of social hypocrisy and cold calculation. Its sensibility is cosy but sharp, the feeling of a rainy afternoon spent with a clever, slightly tart old lady watching everyone in town. It suits a comfort read, a quiet evening, or a long train journey. It is for readers who enjoy classic village whodunits, gentle humour and a puzzle that rewards patience over shock.
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