![]() I have good friends who share my taste for mysteries and crime fiction more generally but who simply can’t stand Miss Marple. Indeed, Hickson channeled Christie’s creation to an uncanny degree: the spinster Jane Marple living in the village of St Mary Mead, gardening, knitting, faithfully going to church, observing all that goes on with her compassionate but steely intelligence. Like many readers of our generation, Wendy and I see the actress Joan Hickson in our mind’s eye whenever we are reading about Miss Marple. I suspect that the vast majority of fans will enjoy this high-spirited volume, loaded as it is with allusions to the canonical novels and stories. The book begins with a generic uncredited introduction, which doesn’t inspire confidence, but the stories themselves are generally good. The dozen authors represented are all women, most of them best-selling writers irritatingly, no editor is identified. ![]() Simply titled (rather cheekily) Marple, on the front cover it’s subtitled Twelve New Mysteries on the title page, inside the book, it’s Twelve New Stories. ![]() On September 6, we got a new biography to dig into-Lucy Worsley’s Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman-and now, on top of that, we have a tribute to the incomparable Miss Marple. Admirers of Agatha Christie have much to be thankful for this month. ![]()
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