A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED
Agatha Christie
Oh, how I love mystery, and all that detective work. Crime scenes, and blood, and carefully planned murders that are slowly unravelled to reveal an unthinkable plot. I like.
Except I never thought that the detective in question would be a little old woman called Miss Marple, using her elderly female identity to poke around. After all that Sherlock Holmes and Kindaichi I’ve been reading, with their unique quirks and habits – this is so cute I just imagine this ahma hobbling around and gossiping with neighbours but actually she damn smart HAHA. I mean ok la, I would have liked it if she had a little bit more quirk in her character, but I guess having an old lady to investigate a murder is a new enough idea.
Published in 1950, the characters are timeless, bearing a hint of our local 三姑六婆s, some of them more interested in keeping up appearances than others. One particularly cute scene was when they all arrived in Little Paddocks independently, with the exact same compliments –
“What lovely chrysanthemums!”
“You’ve got your central heating on, haven’t you?”
– prompting Julia to comment on how people are like gramophone records.
Miss Marple only makes her appearance from Chapter 8 – which was rather late, but she starts off by offering a fresh perspective to the (thought to be closed) case. As with all detective novels, the culprit turns out to be someone you’d never suspect, and a few people died along the way 😢 Truths are uncovered about the people surrounding the mystery, and as always, people are not who they seem to be.
The wordplay in this one was quite fun – one particularly incriminating one was “she wasn’t there” as opposed to “she wasn’t there”, with emphasis on the place instead of the person. Having Dora Bunner (“Bunny”) as an absent-minded old lady also helped to mask the fact that she uses both “Letty” and “Lotty” to address her friend, and it gives you the oooooooooh moment of truth when you find out what it means (-‘:
Bought this one on impulse at Popular because all my friends like to be late and I have to kill time 🙄 but it turned out to be quite an interesting read! I like the ending part when everybody else has a happy ending and then there’s this:
‘She actually presented me with the recipe for Delicious Death as a kind of wedding present. She added that I was on no account to divulge the secret to Julia, because Julia had ruined her omelette pan.’
HAHA I sat on my bed and laughed out very loudly.
Kthxbye what a lazy Friday afternoon 🌞
photo log. 