Sleeping Murder / The Murder At The Vicarage

Of all the memorable characters in detective fiction, Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple is among the most engaging. Unrivaled as a female sleuth, she has captivated two generation of readers and filmgoers.
Sleeping Murder, Miss Marple’s final case, was written when Dame Agatha was at the peak of her creative talent, and has only recently been released for publication. It marks a double farewell, first to Agathe Christie, one of the greatest mystery writers of all time, and second to that universally beloved spinster, Miss Jane Marple. The novel—in which Miss Marple goes to the aid of a newlywed couple whose recently purchased Victorian villa conceals a strange and frightening secret—is ingenious, imaginative and utterly tantalizing.
Sleeping Murder becomes even more meaningful when presented along with Miss Marple’s first adventure, The Murder at the Vicarage, in which she must discover which of the numerous persons who confess to a seemingly impossible murder is guilty of the crime. The novel won unanimous critical acclaim when originally published, the Saturday Review calling it “without a doubt the best detective story Agatha Christie has written since Roger Ackroyd”.
Both vintage Christie, these two Marple adventures—her first and last—are a reader’s delight.