Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple) by Agatha Christie

 

Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple) by Agatha Christie.

This edition published 13th October 2022 by Harper Collins.

From the cover of the book:

A strange house...
A ghost from the past...

As soon as she moves into Hillside, Gwenda knows there’s something strange about this house.

A sealed room. A hidden door. The apparition of a young woman being strangled.

But strangest of all – this all seems quite familiar.

As her friend Jane Marple investigates, the answer seems to lie in a crime committed nearly twenty years ago.

The killer may have gotten away with murder. But Miss Marple is never far behind.

Never underestimate Miss Marple...

***********

Newly-weds Gwenda and Giles Reed met in New Zealand where Gwenda was brought up. They decide to settle down to married life in Giles' homeland, so Gwenda heads to England first to find a home. After a fruitless search, she is drawn to a house called Hillside in Dillmouth, Devon, and decides this is the one for them.

Gwenda sets to work organising improvements to Hillside in preparation for Giles' arrival. Right from the start, there are things about the house that feel familiar, even though she is sure she has never been in England before. She is at a loss to explain how she knows the pattern on the wallpaper that used to hang in the nursery, that there used to be connecting doors between the sitting room and the dining room, and that the steps in the garden seem to be in the 'wrong place' - but most worryingly of all, she is concerned about the vision of a young woman called 'Helen' lying strangled at the bottom of the stairs that keeps plaguing her.

Gwenda begins to feel she is losing her mind, but then she meets Miss Marple, and she is reassured by the old lady's belief that the answers might lie in very real events that took place during Gwenda's childhood. Despite Miss Marple's advice to let 'sleeping murder' lie, Gwenda and Giles are determined to find out the truth. Miss Marple has no option but to become part of the investigation - especially since she seems to be the only one who can see that delving into the past could be very dangerous indeed...

It has been a while since I have been an an adventure with dear old Miss Marple as part of my Agatha Christie journey this year, so I really enjoyed immersing myself in her more gentle crime-busting methods once again - particularly as Sleeping Murder is a Marple mystery that I have not read before.

The story begins with Gwenda's uncanny experiences at Hillside, and develops into a double sided investigation. On one side, Gwenda and Giles track down leads about the mysterious 'Helen' with the gusto of youth (guided by Miss Marple's often cryptic advice); and on the other, Miss Marple engages in her more canny sleuthing in her characteristic guise of a harmless old biddy. The clues begin to emerge slowly as the trio find out more about Helen, and Christie devises some lovely red herrings to keep you off the scent of who may, or may not, be guilty of causing her demise, by providing a set of very plausible suspects among the men in Helen's life that were 'on the spot' nearly twenty years ago.

Christie delves nicely into murky memories of the past in this tale, hinging the plot on snippets of hearsay, and differing opinions of the murdered woman. She runs recurring themes of unhappy relationships, and mental instability hidden beneath outwardly respectable facades through the story - and I love the way she contrasts the trusting tendencies of Gwenda and Giles with Miss Marple's hard-learned cynicism. Miss Marple's razor sharp ability to spot inconsistencies, half truths, and deliberate attempts to pervert the truth are key, and she saves the day most delightfully at the climax of  the story! Go Miss Marple!

“It's very dangerous to believe people, I haven't for years.” Miss Marple

 

This ambles along very enjoyably through clever twists and turns, and keeps you guessing all the way to the shocking truth that Miss Marple spotted early in the proceedings. I loved that the final flourish takes place in a location I know very well too - on the terrace of the Imperial Hotel in Torquay! What a perfect choice to round off a year of Christie delights exploring the methods and motives in her books.

This is my December choice for #ReadChristie2023 exploring strangulation as a method of murder. I alternated between the text, and the fabulous audio book narrated by Stephanie Cole - whose dulcet tones are just perfect for Miss Marple. 

Sleeping Murder is available to buy now in multiple formats.

About the author:

Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.