We made it to the very end of the series! I’ll be honest – when I first started this journey, I had no idea it would take me this long. And I didn’t realize how much I would enjoy Sleeping Murder, in particular. In my memory, it was a little silly. And to be fair, it has plenty of silly elements… But there’s also plenty of good to go with the silliness.

In many ways, Sleeping Murder is Peak Marple, both the good and the bad of the series. It’s a cold case in a remote English village (with a brief stopover in St. Mary Mead). Miss Marple uses all her social engineering skills to dig up info, and all her instincts to piece it together. And, in true Miss Marple fashion, the ultimate end of the story is domestic felicity. So let’s break down this last, Marpliest, of cases…

What sets Miss Marple apart…

Character

To understand what makes Sleeping Murder a prime example of a Miss Marple story, we need to understand what sets Jane Marple apart. First – her knowledge. Jane Marple is the product of her experiences, a lifetime of observing others and reading between the lines. She has a keen understanding of personal and class psychology, which she applies to collecting information. (She’s much more likely than Poirot to learn information from a maid or a local store clerk.) She’s famous for her analogies to other villagers, which serve as a pattern of behavior for her to reference in her crime-solving. And she has a keen understanding of English life – from life milestones to horticultural details – that come in handy when tackling a new mystery.

Next, her motivations. Miss Marple takes pleasure in watching people and solving puzzles, almost doing it as a matter of habit. She also takes crime extremely seriously, and has a religious bent towards Justice. This comes out particularly strongly when she’s personally involved in a case – and since she’s not a private detective, many of her stories have some kind of personal connection. Note that never in the series has she been showy with her knowledge or suspicions – she only voices concern or interferes when lives are at risk. And she’s not motivated by self-aggrandizement: she’s not trying to show up the police, and is often flattered that they want to pay her any attention.

Story patterns

All of this means that Miss Marple shines in specific setups. She’s great with English settings, ideally village stories. (In villages, her analogies work particularly well, and she’s able to use her social network to advantage.) She’s particularly strong with cold case reconstruction, for two reasons: She can pull on her social engineering skills to dig up old information others can’t access; and she can reconstruct prior events to high probability. While she can work with the police, she does equally well with lay assistants. Those lay assistants often turn on her protective instincts and her drive towards justice, motivating her more than pure intellectual curiosity. And those instincts can drive her investment in more personal outcomes for the secondary protagonists, including (ideally) domestic bliss.

This often leads to the exploration of specific themes. Miss Marple’s cold cases often highlight justice, in both a personal and karmic sense. There’s almost always an exploration of the impact of crime on the innocent. Given the class of the characters, these stories tend to have themes of twisted love, greed, and / or revenge. We’re dealing a lot with inheritances or marriages; a little less so with the more prosaic business or political dealings that Poirot might explore. Miss Marple deals only in the personal, and a great Miss Marple story feels timeless, rooted in human connections.

…and how it manifests in Sleeping Murder

So let’s look at our checklist, and compare it against Sleeping Murder. Starting with the setting: a cold case, set in a remote English village. Check, check. Discovery of a case from a personal connection? She meets Gwenda through her nephew Raymond. Social engineering? Miss Marple pulls out all the stops, from finding an excuse to end up in Dillmouth to actually digging up info; check. Lay assistants, towards whom she feels protective? Check-plus – in one of her earliest scenes with Gwenda, she literally brings her cocoa and a hot-water bottle.

What about thematically? I want to tread more carefully here, as there is the potential for spoilers – but suffice it to say that Sleeping Murder hits many of the themes described above. Most importantly, the story is intensely personal, without a hint of professional crime. Gwenda’s exploring her father’s story, and that of his second love; she’s learning her own story as well as theirs over the course of the book. Miss Marple serves as her guide and protector on this journey, setting a path towards domestic felicity. Thematically, as well as structurally, this is a very Miss Marple story – and as you know, I tend to love those.

A hidden treasure

Why, then, did I have such a disparaging memory of Sleeping Murder?

Well, just to clear the air, some parts of the story are still silly. The idea of “monkey’s paws” still struck me as a little melodramatic from Gwenda. Gwenda and Giles tend to rush headlong into decisions that clearly open them to psychological, if not physical, risk, which can make them a little frustrating to root for. And the solve, while technically impressive, left me feeling a bit – unbelieving; I’ve never loved this ending.

But Christie does her best with many of these issues. I remember finding Gwenda much more melodramatic than she comes across in the story, where she spends weeks renovating Hillside before getting a little concerned. And I couldn’t figure out that difference – until I re-watched the adaptations. Suffice it to say that the adapters have a lot to answer for… which we will explore in the next post!

Until then – stay cozy, and stay curious!