From the readers perspective, in that sense, the clues aren’t many but that doesn’t make this any less fun to read, nor any less surprising to get to the answer. While Inspector Slack seems to think that she’d be out of her depth (this mystery not being connected with the village she knows), Miss Marple picks up on the few physical clues early on, but more importantly on the personality traits of connected people or those reflected in their actions to unravel various threads.

And to solve it, Miss Marple relies on what she knows best ‘human nature’ which is, as she says, the same everywhere. In this engrossing book which drew me in right from the start, Agatha Christie gives us a complex puzzle with plenty of twists and surprises. Ruby doesn’t seem to have any ‘enemies’, so who could have killed her and why? And how did the body end up in Col Bantry’s library? Meanwhile another body is found, seemingly unconnected, and yet… The police, well aware of Miss Marple’s ‘talents’’ are glad to have her on hand. As much of the puzzle is connected with the Majestic Hotel, Dolly Bantry invites Miss Marple to accompany her there for a few days. The local Chief Constable, Col Melchett comes down to investigate (assisted by Inspector Slack), while Conway Jefferson (who also happens to know the Bantrys) calls in Sir Henry Clithering, formerly of Scotland Yard (and another admirer of Miss Marple’s talents). Alongside, Basil Blake who works in films has been known to have loud parties in his home, just the kind where someone who looked (and dressed) like Ruby might have been.

Here she had become close to a guest, millionaire Conway Jefferson who wanted to adopt her, though his only surviving ‘family’, his son-in-law Mark Gaskell, and daughter-in-law Adelaide Jefferson, unsurprisingly, didn’t approve. Soon it emerges that the dead girl was Ruby Keene, a dancer working at the Majestic Hotel in Danemouth. The police are summoned of course, but having witnessed Miss Marple’s talents with solving murders in The Thirteen Problems, Dolly Bantry telephones to her as well. A beautiful blonde in evening dress is just lying there-dead-and neither Arthur nor Dolly Bantry (nor indeed any of the staff seem to know her-certainly not the kind of person one would expect to see in St Mary Mead). The third of the Miss Marple books, The Body in the Library (1942) is a book I reread last week as part of a challenge with one of my Goodreads groups which is reading books set in different ‘Scenes of Classic Crime’ across the year.Īs morning dawns in Gossington Hall, residence of Col and Mrs Bantry, Mrs Bantry is awoken from her early morning dream by the maid reporting a body in the library! Unsure whether she is still dreaming or awake, she convinces her husband to go take a look, and it appears the maid was right.

Miss marple murder in the library