Welcome back to our series on the art of literary adaptation, using the Miss Marple series as a guide. For those of you who are new, I’ve been re-reading the adventures of my favorite spinster sleuth, and comparing the novels with both the BBC and ITV adaptations. It’s been a fascinating way to see how Miss Marple evolves, and how adapters take these evolutions into account as they work through a new medium.

This week, we’re taking a closer look at They Do It With Mirrors. It’s a slim book, but still full of mystery-solving goodness. Christie continues to come up with new storytelling conceits. In this go-around, she follows Miss Marple more closely than ever, giving us greater insight into how she Investigates. (This is also my second entry in a couple of reading challenges – a historical mystery for Cruisin’ Through the Cozies and a couple of different slots on my Cozopoly board!)

An early start

They Do It With Mirrors starts well before murder occurs, and follows Miss Marple very closely until the actual event. In the first scene, Miss Marple visits a school friend at the Savoy. This friend, Ruth van Rydock, expresses her concerns for her sister Carrie Louise, who is on idealist husband #3. Ruth recently visited Carrie Louise at her country house, Stonygates, and felt the vibes were off. She’s not sure what to do – but she trusts her old friend Jane. So, she asks Jane to accept an invitation to Stonygates and poke around.

Miss Marple, unable to resist a help ask, accepts. When Carrie Louise (prompted by Ruth) invites her to stay at Stonygates, she heads off to the countryside to investigate. This setup places Miss Marple in the center of the action much earlier than in prior novels. She (and we) get to build relationships with each of the characters well before anyone kicks the bucket. In fact (spoilers ahead!), the murder victim is only discovered a third of the way into the book! (By this point I was starting to think I’d have to extend my “police” axis to include “no police at all”.)

This change creates meaningful differences in the way we interact with each of the characters. Our initial understanding of each suspect is uncolored by stress or suspicion. This allows Christie to play with a more diverse set of characterizations, including Wally, an ex-GI who’s understandably sullen. Exposing Miss Marple to the “natural” state of affairs – Wally has little to do and his wife constantly flirts with someone else – leaves us more inclined to feel sympathy – not just intellectually understand it. The additional exposure grounds Miss Marple’s deductions in observable characters traits – it feels more like intelligence, less like a magic trick.

An expert perspective on Miss Marple

They Do It With Mirrors features more than just a structural change to keep things fresh. The narration also shifts from that in prior novels. Instead of a more third-person omniscient perspective, here we’re limited to following Miss Marple for the first third of the book. There are no deviations, no switches to the police investigation team or the other players in the novel. For the first 70-odd pages, it’s all Miss Marple, all the time.

Not only that, but the narrator gives us more insight than ever before into Miss Marple’s thoughts. For the first time in the series, we see narration like “Miss Marple wondered”, or “Miss Marple thought.” At the beginning of chapter 6, we are treated to the inner workings of Miss Marple’s mind as she searches for the right St. Mary Mead analogy. And we get a better sense of what actions she’s taking deliberately, including my favorite quote:

“Miss Marple had been careful to bring her bird glasses with her. At this moment she brought them into action. Was there, or was there not, a flight of siskins by that far clump of trees?”

Agatha Christie, They do it with mirrors

This may seem like a small shift, but it’s the first time that Christie has confirmed what Miss Marple does deliberately. This expands our understanding of the character as an expert, and one who works for that expertise. We see her testing her hypotheses, gathering data, flexing her deductive muscles. Not only that, we we how that thinking translates into action and dialogue.

This means that later, when the perspective shifts back to a more “traditional” perspective, we still understand that Miss Marple’s actions are deliberate. Christie’s structural and narrative choices in They Do It With Mirrors establish Miss Marple as an experienced, wise investigator who finds and follows clues – not just a lucky and instinctive truth-teller.

Strong characters and a weak theme

The overall effect is a story composed of character studies. We’ve got Miss Marple in a deep-dive, and her (neutral, investigative) perspective on the other residents of Stonygates. The setting (a criminal rehabilitation facility) is perhaps under-utilized – it’s somewhat surprising that the criminals don’t come under more suspicion. The solution is, perhaps, just shy of fair – it’s possible to figure it out with the information given, but pretty tricky to spot all the little clues.

And thematically, it’s a bit of a mind-bender, at least given modern thinking. Because – on the one hand – the idea of idealist philanthropy going awry is a tale as old as time. But on the other hand – it’s not clear what the solution is meant to be. Carrie Louise, after all, is held up as the only character “never deceived by illusion” – but she’s also the biggest philanthropic idealist! (In many ways, she has extreme Dora Bunner vibes.)

This dissonance is never really satisfactorily resolved – there’s no sense that anything will change (except for with Gina). And so, while They Do It With Mirrors might enjoy the benefit of strong character portraits, they stand separate.

This will make for an interesting set of choices when it comes to adaption. One would expect that the characters will be reasonably well-realized. The question, then, becomes – how to resolve the thematic dissonance, for a modern audience? You could imagine approaches ranging from “do nothing” to “clarify the resolution” to “introduce new themes”. It will be interesting next week to see how the BBC and iTV teams approached the challenge.

Until then, stay cozy, and stay curious!