Miss Marple's Final Cases is a collection of short stories featuring Miss Marple. The final nature of the book is due to this being published after Agatha Christie's death in 1976, and presumably these are stories that were written but not published. There are nine short stories in all.
Two of the stories stood out in my mind; The Dressmaker's Doll stands out for the sheer suspense - it's really not what I'd expect from Agatha Christie, since it's almost horror. The other that stands out is In a Glass Darkly, which is a short, predictable but nontheless interesting story.
The problem with this is that neither of these stories actually feature Miss Marple at all, and I'm really not sure what they're doing in this book. I certainly didn't expect it when I got to the two non-Marple stories, and I felt a bit let down; I suppose that if the book had been tagged and other stories I'd have been a lot happier.
The Marple stories are quite normal fare; each features a situation where the doddering Miss Marple has an insight which solves a case, or the sense to gather evidence when everyone else thinks things are fine. I say they're normal - they're not bad stories per se, just that they don't really stand out as being really clever, just interesting. It is perhaps a necessary feature of short mystery stories, they pose a problem and then quickly pose a solution.
So all in all, this is a short but interesting set of mystery stories, mostly featuring Miss Marple. It's not really something to write home about, but it's certainly a decent enough read, and the stories are short and to the point enough to be able to sit down and read without losing an entire day.
Buy Miss Marple's Final Cases from Amazon.com
No comments:
Post a Comment