Miss Marple: The Moving Finger
“You know,” she observed pensively. “To commit a successful murder must be very much like bringing off a conjuring trick….You’ve got to make people look at the wrong thing and in the wrong place”
Hello!
The more books I read, the more I realize that with some exceptions, my love from Miss Marple has likely stemmed from the fact that I have watched all of Agatha Christie’s Marple at least twice.
That being said, I am really enjoying the books, and this is probably my favorite full length novel so far, despite one very large quibble (more on that later), and the fact that Miss Marple’s role in the story is fairly small.
The title of The Moving Finger comes from a translation of poetry by Omar Khayyám:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
The story in this is a first person narration from the perspective of a young man who has been injured in a plane crash. He moves with his fashionable sister to a small rural town where there is an anonymous letter writer sending nasty letters to everyone. When one of these letters lead to an apparent suicide and then a murder, Jerry, the narrator, begins to take an interest in the case. When he shares his observations with the odd old lady (why hello Miss Marple!) staying with the vicar and his wife, she helps them all expose the true culprit.
Overall, this was fun. The choice of narrator was odd, but I didn’t mind it too much, and Jerry’s sister Joanna might be my favorite Christie character to date. I did have one very big issue with the stupid and insane risk that Miss Marple encourages a character to take in order to expose the murder, but other than that, it really was a perfect little mystery with a lot of fun side stuff too.
Adaptations
This was also adapted by both the 1980s and the 2000s shows, and I once again have a clear favorite.
The Moving Finger 1985 – Joan Hickson
There is no doubt that Joan Hickson is a wonderful Miss Marple, and this two episode version is a solid adaptation. However, while Hickson is great, I felt that the remaining casting and acting let this production down. This is a book that has a people of a pretty big span of ages, and yet all the actors seemed to be about the same age with very little character differentiation. Plus, Joanna is isn’t nearly modern and fun enough.
To make my point a bit further, below is a side by side comparison of two characters who are meant to be an older man (50s?) and a younger woman (20s?). The right is the 1985 version, in which they look like they are no more than 5 years apart, and the left is the 2006 version, which makes so much more sense.
The Moving Finger 2006 – Geraldine McEwan
This adaptation takes some big liberties with some of the characters (notably Jerry), but somehow, I felt it came closer to the spirit of the book, and it is just so much more fun!
I didn’t appreciate all the plot changes (I could have done without the extraneous death in the beginning and the change in the makeover scene), but in the end, this was a remarkable hour and a half of television, and well worth my time. Gereldine McEwan did such a great job of playing Miss Marple as a tight lipped, all knowing sort of character, and it works SO well.
I’ll be back again in a couple weeks with a look at A Murder is Announced, which I remember quite fondly.
