A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie takes murder and Miss Marple, to the West Indies. I suppose there are only so many murders one little village can absorb without becoming wholly eerie, so Christie solves this problem by removing Miss Marple, as a form of respite after a long illness, to the Caribbean and plonking her down in a setting both unfamiliar and uninteresting to her. She becomes rather bored with the irritating and superficial guests at the hotel, who provide her with little food for thought and no great conversation. Even the weather is irritatingly uninteresting as the climate is so constant. Miss Marple is an old English lady who prefers her old English countryside to the more exotic, yet unvarying, climate of the West Indies. It seems she hardly knows how she will get through the next weeks until her return to her own beloved island.

Then Major Palgrave dies quite unexpectedly. At first it seems above board, but not having anything else to occupy her mind, Miss Marple begins to consider the situation and ultimately realizes that Major Palgrave must have been murdered, the only question is, why? The only visible solution is because he claimed to have a photograph of a murderer. Miss Marple gently eases the local doctor around to her way of thinking and suddenly the whole island seems to be full of danger instead of rest and relaxation.

I’m biased. I love Agatha Christie and I love Miss Marple, especially as played by Joan Hickson, so I’m loath to give this anything other than a 5 out of 5 for being a good, comfortable English murder, for all its being set in another country altogether, in the Christie tradition.