Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple Mysteries)

by Agatha Christie

Volume 77 in The Agatha Christie Collection (1976). Limited edition of 1000 copies worldwide. Soon after Gwenda moved into her new home, odd things started to happen. Despite her best efforts to modernise the house, she only succeeded in dredging up its past. Worse, she felt an irrational sense of terror every time she climbed the stairs...In fear, Gwenda turned to Miss Marple to exorcise her ghosts. Between them, they were to solve a 'perfect' crime committed many years before.

• ISBN10: 0002317850
• ISBN13: 9780002317856
• Publish Date: 4 August 2003 (first published 1977)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 13 March 2007
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 224
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[brokentune]

Her words held all the pointed innuendo that elderly ladies are able to achieve with the minimum of actual statement.

I had low expectations for this one. Nemesis broke me. Nemesis was the book that obliterated any regards I may have harboured for Miss Marple.
It seems, however, that Sleeping Murder was written well before Nemesis, even if it was published last in the series, and that the Miss Marple of Sleeping Murder is not as annoying as her older self, yet.
As becomes clear at the end of this book, the Miss Marple in Sleeping Murder still has some spring in her step.

Yet, as far as Dame Agatha's books are concerned, this one is not her finest. There is a lot of repetition in the discussion of the mystery and the repetition makes it easy to predict the murderer fairly early on.

All in all, there isn't really anything about the story or the book that stands out but it is a light and quick read for the Christie completist.