Usually, I know the murder about 20 pages before the end but in the * the mirror crack’d* I thought I knew the culprit but it was the least likely suspect …someone i wouldn’t have thought of
Of course, Marple realized something that no one else did in the last 5 pages and it wasn’t the most exciting mystery
In fact, it was mostly Ms christies thoughts on getting old and the suburban sprawl invading Marples town…
Do all the Marple mysteries have trick endings? i haven’t read much of her books
and I liked the poriot tv shows i’d post what happened but I’m not sure how to do spoiler tags …
I think it was A.C. who would write the whole novel without deciding who was guilty, then go back and fix it up when she reached the end. And part of the formula is that she actually finds different motivations. And it is formulaic: you know that it’s a mystery, and that all will be revealed in the end. But her books are certainly not all the same, and her detectives are not all the same: the formula allows considerable looseness. There are even books where you know, and are expected to know, what is going on and who the killer is. She could do that because her readers knew that she had more than one plot, and accepted her for what she was.
Some people thought that the looseness was cheating. And some people thought that it wasn’t high literature. I’m not a purist: I don’t mind being trolled.
Ms Christie was incomparable for her unexpected solutions. Read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd for the ne plus ultra of her art. When I first read it I had to pick my jaw up from the floor before instantly reading it again.
And that writing method is what made her books so effective as mysteries: there are several people who had motive, means, and opportunity and the prime suspect shifts as the story progresses.
The Mirror Crack’d is one of several Christie novels (along with Roger Ackroyd and Orient Express) with plot twists that are famous enough to have been accidentally spoiled for me long before I read them.
It’s really a shame when that happens, because the books are a lot less fun to read when you know the twist beforehand.
I went through my Agatha Christie stage back in high school. Must have read 25 or 30 of them. I was (mostly) gobsmacked at the end of her books. She’s very, very good. (I can only remember one book where I had the whole thing figured out a third of the way through.)
One book in particular, A Holiday for Murder (aka Murder for Christmas) is a “locked room” murder mystery. Elderly gentleman gets offed in a boarding-room house with a number of guests. Room locked from the inside; no obvious method for ingress/egress.
Poirot on the case. Stereotypical everyone gathered in the drawing room at the end to hear him announce the killer. As the reader, I had no idea how anyone could have committed the murder. It was just impossible, right? Everyone had either an alibi or some other reason why they could not possibly be the killer. Plus, that locked room!
But not only does Poirot suss out the killer, he goes through each guest, one by one and explains how each one could have done it, had they been so inclined. Poirot didn’t just solve an “impossible” locked room mystery, he solved it like 5 different ways!
I love locked room mysteries! The master of this genre, outdoing even Christie in sheer inventiveness, was John Dickson Carr. His 1935 book The Hollow Man (aka The Three Coffins in the US) is acknowledged by most critics to be the greatest locked room mystery of all. It’s almost impossible to solve yet perfectly logical in the end.
I thought what was great about this one was that the moment I read the name of the murderer, it all fell into place (and there was some flashback narration as well) so that I didn’t have to go back and read it again.
My least favorite surprise ending was “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas” (1938). Not only is the murderer not on anyone’s radar as the culprit, it’s someone who really, really ought to be above suspicion, within the genre. I felt it was a cheat; but it was a good cheat. Anyway, I was at least as much interested in the “how” as the “who,” since it was another locked room mystery. So I didn’t throw the book against the wall.
One of the coolest things about The Mirror Crack’d book is that the solution is on the very first page, but of course, when you’re starting out, you have no way of knowing that.
I’ve just had a look at my copy, and don’t see what you mean. It’s all about Miss Marple’s gardener. Can you please reply (in a spoiler box) so I know what I’m missing? Thanks!
“syringeing roses for green-fly” which I presume involves poison, although I don’t remember if it’s the one used for the murder? If so, I don’t see that as the whole solution, only a relatively small part of it. If that isn’t it, I’m confused too, I just re-read the first couple of pages and I don’t see anything else.
the thing that threw me off was the assumption that German measles was no longer a thing …but they never mentioned when she had the natural child how old it was or when she met the first victim I do think she killed the secretary just to be a bitch tho ala i can’t have him you cant either after it unraveled
Well see theres a key assumption (its in the spoiler tag above) that christie assumes her self youd make and looking back you feel dumb for making it …
I was wrong. The clue appears on page 19, not page 1. So sorry. I’m looking at the kindle edition preview on the amazon website, as I don’t own the book any more. But on that page…
[spoiler]Heather Badcock and Miss Marple are talking about Marina Gregg staying at Gossington Hall and making a movie there. Heather is speaking and she says (my bold, but italics are in the original),
Of course, Heather had German measles, and she was the reason Marina lost her baby. Marina realizes this when she meets Heather at the fête, and Heather reminds her of when they first met. That’s when Marina decides to kill her. [/spoiler]I haven’t read the book in years, but I’ve seen the Joan Hickson Masterpiece version a few times. It’s pretty good.
Just got back from seeing And Then There Were None at a local theater. I’ve read the book and seen a movie, a TV miniseries and at least one theater version, so there were no surprises. However, I was still impressed about how cleverly the play was constructed and how she misdirected the audience while subtly manipulating them into seeing the characters in ways that made the mystery work. A true master at plotting and characterization.
One thing not yet mentioned in this thread is that Christie got the idea for the solution to The Mirror Crack’d from a famous real life incident. It’s described in the second paragraph of the Personal Life section of this Wikipedia page:Gene Tierney
If you enjoy Christie’s trick endings, in addition to the classics already mentioned, I recommend Crooked House, Murder Is Easy and my personal favorite, Endless Night.
I really like Crooked House. Of course these days the twist is somewhat old hat/less shocking because we’ve moved past it and beyond towards even more shocking truths that have been discussed or portrayed in media. Hell, creepy children is even a cliché at this point. But in her day (and mine, when I first read it !) it was very much a cortical nuclear blast.