The Murder at the Vicarage

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Compact disc.
Read by Richard E. Grant.
Colonel Protheroe, local magistrate and overbearing landowner, is the most detested man in the little English village of St. Mary Mead. Everyone, even the vicar, wishes he was dead. And very soon he is--shot in the head in the vicar's study. A visiting artist confesses to the murder, but residents saw him elsewhere when the Colonel was shot. If he didn't do it, than who did? Is he protecting the Colonel's wife whom he loves? Faced with a surfeit of suspects, only the inscrutable Miss Marple can unravel the tangled web of clues.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Meet Miss Marple submitted by camelsamba on August 8, 2016, 10:13pm I was surprised that the vicar was the narrator of this book when it was listed as first in the Miss Marple "series." My suspicion is that Miss Marple only became developed as a leading character later on, once Christie realized the power of someone who "is a student of human nature" (might be a misquote). Having just finished this book (my 2nd Christie this year), I'm interested to learn more about the overall arch of Christie's writing career.

I give the mystery itself 4 stars ("i really liked it"). Clues emerge slowly and somewhat organically. Things we (as listeners / readers) suspect might be the breakthrough turn out to be insignificant. People are complex. What I didn't enjoy, however, were the attitudes about women. Not sure if they're just a reflection of the time / setting, or a biting commentary of the inanity of those attitudes. Either way, I did mentally cringe at times and this lowered my overall rating of the book to 3 ("i liked it").

The CDs have that unfortunate chracteristic of not signalling when you've reached the end.