הרצח באיים הקאריביים

Miss Marples 9th outing takes her to the Caribbean island of St Honoré.Major Palgrave is the type of gent who is always reminiscing and telling everyone stories of his travels. 'Purple of face, with a glass eye, and the general appearance of a stuffed frog.' (I love this description of him.) He's telling Miss Marple of the time a friend of his took a photo of a murderer. As he was about to show Miss Marple the photo, he sees someone behind her and quickly changes the subject, tucking the photo back into his wallet.It's quite obvious he's recognised someone, probably the person from the very photo he was about to show. Sure enough, the next day the Major is found dead, due to an apparent heart attack.I enjoyed how Miss Marple quietly observes everyone at the hotel, listening to their stories and watching them After all, who really knows anyone when you're on holiday. We believe what people tell us about their lives, where they live, what they do for a living etc, as we have no reason not to.I was surprised to read about some of Miss Marples past relationships "... a young man at a croquet party. He had seemed so nice - rather gay, almost Bohemian in his views. And then he had been unexpectedly warmly welcomed by her father....and Miss Marple had found that, after all, he was dull. Very dull. "There are a few murders within these pages and it's not too difficult to solve this one. At 155 pages, it's not much more than a short story but there's a lot squeezed into this small space.

In A Caribbean Mystery, we once again join Miss Jane Marple but as the title suggests? We’re far from the quaint English village of St. Mary Mead but rather, on the Caribbean island of St. Honoré. Miss Marple is there to ease her rheumatism thanks to the kindness of her nephew, author Raymond West.I think what initially always hits home when I read (or watch) A Caribbean Mystery is that we know Miss Marple is already an elderly lady but now, her age has slightly caught up with her at least physically and it makes me sad. Perhaps because I have enjoyed these stories since I watched Joan Hickson portray her and thanks to IMDB? I now feel extremely old as I was perhaps 6 or 7 when I first watched them - she is and will always be Miss Marple to me. This fictional world and its murders have been a part of my life for nearly four decades now and I love them.A Caribbean Mystery stands out because we are far from home, and so there’s now only one familiar face and that’s of course Jane Marple. Whilst enjoying her knitting under the hot sun and watching the various hotel guests go about their day, she is as always paying a little more attention to them than perhaps is socially correct, but that’s what makes her who she is.  However, it is the story from a retired military officer that starts the chaos and murder to descend upon the many residents of this idyllic retreat. He has a photograph supposedly of a murderer… But that’s all she knows.Then murder arrives and it’s twisted, calculated and has you wondering what will happen next as is the genius of Christie’s work.Agatha Christie’s world-building is as wonderful here at bringing the hotel for the wealthy to life as she is at ensuring you’re safely ensconced among the hedgerows of St Mary Mead (which is theoretically Hampshire so beautiful). It’s as immersive as all her other books and brings to life the changes that were happening at home and abroad during the early 1960s. This is both a world Jane Marple is unfamiliar with for its locale and the new dawning decade that was a far cry from what she was accustomed to. I love these books, I know them all my heart and never tire of watching, reading or  listening to them because you’re drawn back in time, and as I have said before Agatha Christie’s skill of weaving a mystery I think remains unparalleled by modern authors.