There's no smoke without fire.
The Moving Finger
by Agatha Christie
Genre: Murder Mystery
About: Jerry Burton and his sister move to a quiet village on his doctor's orders for rest and relaxation. He expects to be thoroughly bored while his bones mend. But when an anonymous hateful letter arrives on their doorstep, the Burtons begin to see the village with new eyes. Nor are they the only ones being threatened, and soon one of the letter receivers is driven to suicide... or, perhaps, murdered.
Thoughts
This is not a Miss Marple. False advertisement. The story is Jerry and his sister nattering away to the village people for hours on end. A death doesn't happen until more than halfway through the book and Miss Marple only shows up for the last hour.
I did like the reveal because Christie is always great at making everything so simple and yet so unseeable until the very end. But it's a very boring shuffling along of the plot and both Jerry and Joanna have romances that I couldn't care less about.
It certainly does the job of evoking a quiet village with some vaguely interesting gossip and possibly a crazed killer among their midst. I just didn't feel the tension or care too much about the mystery because it was all stifled behind lighthearted romances and brother/sister banter. I missed Jane.
Comments