Miss Marple: Murder At The Vicarage
“I know that in books it is always the most unlikely person. But I never find that rule applies in real life. There it is so often the obvious that is true.”
p 216
Hello!
Welcome to the first post of my 2021 Miss Marple read through. In which the choice of first person narration is confusing, we visit St Mary Mead, and the inimitable Jane Marple solves her first case with very little effort and lots of knitting.
The character of Jane Marple was inspired by Christie’s grandmother, although “much more fussy and less spinsterish”, and I have always enjoyed her calm, observational style of murder solving. She is the quintessential armchair detective, and all of these characteristics are in full force in this first book.
The Book
Murder At The Vicarage was published in 1930 and is the story of a local Colonel who is murdered in the vicar’s study. The vicarage happens to be kitty corner from Miss Marple’s house, and she uses her observations of the comings and goings as well as information that is reported to her to deduce the murderer and surrounding circumstances.
I hadn’t actually read this one before, although I think I had watched one of the shows I talk about below. I didn’t remember who the murderer was, and I did figure it out before the end. I liked that the clues were all available to the reader, and the pacing was satisfying (there is nothing I hate more than when a mystery is unsolvable because the author withholds information).
The narrator is the local vicar who has a rather young and inappropriate wife (not that she DOES anything wrong, just that she isn’t a good “vicar’s wife”). Miss Marple is always a joy, although almost the first thing said about her in this book is that she is “the worst cat in the village” who “always knows every single thing that happens”.
Overall, this was fine. I didn’t feel like the choice of narrator suited the story, which frustrated me, but the mystery itself was fun and twisty.
Adaptations
Miss Marple has been adapted a couple of times, most notably twice by the BBC with three different actresses. In the 1980s Joan Hickson played her in a series titled Miss Marple and in the 2000s, Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie played her in Agatha Christie’s Marple. Both of these are available on Amazon through BritBox.
I do not currently have a favorite among these three actresses. I have watched episodes of these shows before, and enjoyed all three of them, so it will be interesting to see if that changes.
Murder at the Vicarage 1987 – Joan Hickson
This was a pretty straight adaptation of the original text with few embellishments. There are a few characters omitted for simplicity, and Hickson is a fun Jane Marple. Overall, the lighting in this is really dark (see the cover photo above), which makes actually watching it a bit annoying, and there isn’t much that stands out.
Murder at the Vicarage 2005 – Geraldine McEwan
This was a more modernized version with a 1950s-ish setting, and I really enjoyed it despite an odd Miss Marple backstory that seemed a bit weird. There are no characters omitted, although they do update some of the side stories, and overall, I found it to be pleasant and enjoyable.
While this was a perfectly satisfactory book and it is fun to see how a character is born, I actually think the second Miss Marple book is a much better introduction to her character.
This book is known either as The Tuesday Club Murders or The Thirteen Problems, and I will be back to talk about that in two weeks!
