I have to say, when I started this series, I was not anticipating having this many thoughts on the evolution of the Miss Marple books themselves. I genuinely expected that I would write brief overview for each story before jumping in to the adaptations. But here we are, book 4, and I still have Thoughts on the series and its evolution. (As always, expect spoilers!)

If The Moving Finger was The Murder at the Vicarage, redux, then A Murder is Announced is more like The Body in the Library. Both novels feature third-person narration, and a decoy murder of a nearby hotel worker related to an inheritance. In both novels, Miss Marple is one step removed from the survivors, and gossips her way to the truth. And in both novels, Miss Marple develops a friendly relationship with the police (supported by her friend Sir Henry Clithering).

Classifying the Marples: “The finest detective God ever made”

It’s starting to feel like there are two major dimensions we can use to classify the Miss Marple series: How well does Miss Marple know the villagers? And how well does Miss Marple get along with the police? The first two novels kept things “in the neighborhood” of St. Mary Mead, varying Miss Marple’s relationship with the police. The Moving Finger shifted to Miss Marple as outsider, but with a weaker police force. A Murder is Announced rounds out the four options, with an outsider Miss Marple and a helpful police force. (In my other life, I’m a consultant, so you better believe I made a two-by-two to illustrate this.)

The evolution of Miss Marple

I hadn’t realized how long it took Christie to hit upon this particular formula. In fact, perhaps influenced too much by the iTV adaptations, I usually think of this as the “canonical” version. Miss Marple is at her best when she’s an underestimated outsider with a surprisingly strong police connections. It’s fun watching Sir Henry gush over her detection skills, to his godson’s bemusement. It was fun watching D.I. Craddock learn to love Miss Marple’s conviction and insight, and great to watch them actually help each other. (It turns out it’s more entertaining to watch investigators support each other against a shared antagonist, instead of getting in each others’ way.)

“She’s the finest detective God ever made… She can tell you what might have happened and what ought to have happened and even what actually did happen! And she can tell you why it happened!”

Sir Henry Clithering, A Murder is Announced, Agatha Christie

In A Murder is Announced, the police are the Watson to Miss Marple’s Sherlock. They collect the physical evidence and advance the mechanics of the investigation. This allows Miss Marple to collect all the fun, juicy details: relationships, motives, personalities – and weave them together with physical clues to solve the murder. And the analogies are back, with all their insight into how Miss Marple tackles a case – instinctively, recognizing patterns.

”A tendency to always believe the worst”: Miss Marple and post-war Britain

Christie’s writing in A Murder is Announced is deceptively clear, dropping little hints to create a surprisingly complex mystery. It also allows more character work and thematic exploration than ever before. This is Christie’s first post-WWII Miss Marple, and you can tell that she has thoughts. This novel crystallizes themes explored in The Body in the Library: the complexity of modern identities, post-war scarcity, and the changing moral landscape.

Secrets and the difficulty of modern identity

A core focus of the novel is the difficulty of establishing identity in a post-WWII world. As Miss Marple laments,

“Every village and small country place is full of people who’ve just come and settled there without any ties to bring them… And people just come – and all you know about them is what they say about themselves.”

A Murder is Announced, Agatha Christie

This theme of identity repeats over and over, with 3/4 principal characters (and another minor one) deliberately hiding elements of their identities.

This is compounded by the other village secrets – Hinchcliffe and Murgatroyd are queer-coded, there’s a secret husband somewhere. It culminates in the revelation that Letty Blacklock is actually her sister Lottie – and killed to keep her secret. The only characters that are true to themselves (Mitzi and Edmund) help Miss Marple trap Lottie at the climax. The revelation of identity also enables a happy ending for other characters, with Pip and Emma coming clean and finding their own happiness.

The intersection of scarcity and moral decay

Financial concerns also permeate the novel, with the conflict revolving around a massive potential inheritance. From the beginning, characters lament the state of scarcity: they reminisce about better foreign investments, and plentiful coke and coal. The scarcity necessitates a (technically illegal) village barter system, which limits the police view of other activities. This creates the environment for Miss Marple to thrive – she’s the only one who can see everything.

The scarcity also creates room for fuzzy moral logic. The Body in the Library had very clear views on “unearned” economic climbing. In A Murder is Announced, Christie takes a softer stance, with Philippa and Julia rewarded for their deceptive approach to economic stability. Perhaps most surprisingly given prior novels, Julia gets to enjoy her half of the inheritance as a single, international actress. Gone are the requirements of family life for a “happy ending”.

A time and place for everything

The first three Miss Marple novels could seemingly have happened at any time. A Murder is Announced is, by contrast, very specific to its time and place – post-WWII England. This creates a recognizable setting and specific challenges for Christie’s characters to overcome. By grounding this novel in reality, Christie can stop protesting that villages really are full of secrets, and simply focus on unraveling them.

Of the Miss Marples I’ve read so far, this is by far the most thematically compelling, with the most coherent characters. It’s funny and easy to read, with some of my favorite scenes in the whole series. (I love the early chapters, full of rich characterization as we contrast the reactions of different villagers to the announcement, and their entrances to Little Paddocks.) It’s no wonder the book so frequently shows up on “top Miss Marple” lists – I would wholeheartedly recommend it for anyone looking to get into the series.

Next week, we’ll look at how the adaptation teams handled this one. Until then – stay cozy, and stay curious!