More about Marple
Dec. 20th, 2022 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
melliciousI seem to be a bit obsessed with Miss Marple now. Well, I haven't even made much of a dent in the novels yet - there are nine more, so I'll have much more to obsess about.
When last heard from I was re-reading the first three books, and I've finished that now. The three that I read all seem quite different. In the third one Miss M doesn't even turn up until way at the end. In the first and second ones she's around all the time, but often just in the background.
The first and third books are first person. In The Murder at the Vicarage it's the vicar who tells the story - he's Miss Marple's next-door neighbor so she has a bird's eye view of things. In the other two she gets called in by somebody who knows her, and I'm sort of assuming that's how it's going to continue to be since the odds are that murders won't keep happening right next door (no matter what various TV mysteries may tell you). The second book is The Body in the Library and it's told in third person, although occasionally it sort of zooms in and tells you how a certain character feels about things. In The Moving Finger, book 3, it's told from the POV of a young man who has been sent to the country to convalesce - is that the right word? - after an accident. This is the one where Miss M doesn't turn up until late, like three-quarters in.
(When I saw the name The Body in the Library I went, aha! that's where that phrase comes from! - but there's a foreword where Christie says it was already a familiar phrase to her from previous mysteries she had read.)
When last heard from I was re-reading the first three books, and I've finished that now. The three that I read all seem quite different. In the third one Miss M doesn't even turn up until way at the end. In the first and second ones she's around all the time, but often just in the background.
The first and third books are first person. In The Murder at the Vicarage it's the vicar who tells the story - he's Miss Marple's next-door neighbor so she has a bird's eye view of things. In the other two she gets called in by somebody who knows her, and I'm sort of assuming that's how it's going to continue to be since the odds are that murders won't keep happening right next door (no matter what various TV mysteries may tell you). The second book is The Body in the Library and it's told in third person, although occasionally it sort of zooms in and tells you how a certain character feels about things. In The Moving Finger, book 3, it's told from the POV of a young man who has been sent to the country to convalesce - is that the right word? - after an accident. This is the one where Miss M doesn't turn up until late, like three-quarters in.
(When I saw the name The Body in the Library I went, aha! that's where that phrase comes from! - but there's a foreword where Christie says it was already a familiar phrase to her from previous mysteries she had read.)
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