Taken from my blog post: https://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2014/12/13/a-murder-is-announced-by-agatha-chris...

I grew up on Christie. At the time, I was limited to whatever my local library branch physically had on the shelves, so it took awhile to work my way through her bibliography, and even now, I’m not sure I’ve read all of her books. There was that pesky problem of British and American editions with separate titles, leaving me hopelessly confused about what I’ve read. Thankfully, A Murder is Announced had the same title in both editions, which might be why I remember it so well. It might also be because it is an amazingly well written with a nicely tricky mystery.

Oh, Letty! A murder has been announced in the personals section of the local gazette. You kids may not know this, but that’s like Craigslist in print form. And game murder mysteries were old-fashioned acted-out parties where guests solved the mystery. That’s why the residents of the village of Chipping Cleghorn assume they are being invited. Nonetheless, a newspaper invite bit informal, so they contrive excuses to drop by Letitia Blacklock’s home. As they’re settled in, having a smoke and a sherry, a masked man holds them up. The lights go out. Shots echo in the dark room. When someone flips a light, the unknown masked intruder is dead. The police are prone to write it off as a burglary gone bad, except Inspector Craddock can’t quite let it go. His godfather points him in the direction of the little old ladies of the case, citing his own Miss Marple as an example. Before long, we meet her in person.

Christie is in peak form here, displaying skill in every aspect of writing, balanced with atmosphere, character, mystery and philosophy, with not an excess word present. Oh sure, had Christie Sandersonized it, it could have been far beyond its 300 pages, filled with details about the village foliage or the design of their dresses. Except those details are there, and rarely does she tell us; we discover it in clever word choice or implicit in dialogue. This may be why A Murder is Announced is one of her better mysteries; though she provides a number of clues and red herrings, her details are so sparse that careful reading is needed. Come to think of it, Sanderson presents a symphony in a book, while Christie is the soloist, the violin virtuoso, each note given star attention.

Clues are dropped. I wish I could give an opinion on the mystery, but the truth is, I’ve read this enough times that I remembered the solution, just not the reasoning. Still, astute minds in the Goodreads Agatha Christie Lovers group pointed out Dame Agatha was dropping subtle clues from the beginning, along with plenty of red herrings.

Characterization is amazing. Scant descriptors, and yet every utterance hints at character. Check this brief oratory by an elderly gardener when being questioned:

“‘I’ve no idea,’ said Craddock. ‘I suppose this hold-up caused a lot of talk?’

“That it did. What’s us coming to? That’s what Ned Barker said. Comes of going to the pictures so much, he said. But Tom Riley, he says it comes of letting these furriners run about loose. And depend on it, he says, that girl that cooks up there for Miss Blacklock and ‘as such a nasty temper–she’s in it, he said. She’s a Communist or worse, he says, and we don’t like that sort ‘ere.’“

All he does is talk, and with every sentence, Christie gives us the picture of the small town, the gossip, the dynamic between the young and the old, the long-time residents and the foreigners–or furriners, as he says. And so much about the man himself–what he chooses to share with police, his education, his speech pattern, his peer group. Clever, clever.

The sly humor is a nice touch for an adult read–I’m not sure I picked up on it when I was younger.

“‘And it isn’t,’ pursued Mrs. Swettenham, ‘as though you were a worker. You don’t do any work at all.’
‘That’s not in the least true,’ said Edmund indignantly. ‘I’m writing a book.’
‘I meant real work,’ said Mrs. Swettenham.“

But I have no doubt that it was a great deal of work indeed, to craft a book that provides excellent entertainment, and yet such insight into the residents of a small English town. An enjoyable trip down memory lane that gives me all new appreciation for her skill. ( )

Finally a Marple mystery that worked for me…. somewhat!

I can safely say that this is the best Marple story I have read (which isn’t saying much, considering that I have read exactly two full-length novels and three short stories featuring the iconic character.) By now, I have attuned myself to the format and was hence prepared for the huge infodump in the final 20%. (Not that I liked it; I tolerated it.)

What clicked for me:
( )

In The Gazette, a murder is announced for Fri 10/29 at 6:30 PM at Little Paddocks, the home of Leticia Blacklock. Letty expects neighbors to show for the spectacle. At the appointed time, a murder does in fact take place. Letty is injured, leading everyone to deduce that she is the _target. Her good friend, Dora Bunner, recognizes the victim, claiming he tried to get money from Letty.
After Craddock is brought in to investigate, he wishes for help from Miss Marple. Marple does get involved and after hearing more about all the people in the house (incl. Mitzi, Phillipa, Patrick, and Julia), she uncovers info about an inheritance that Letty will receive in the next few months. This proves to be a motive for murder.
Entertaining. I did guess part of it, but not all of it. I liked the ending. ( )

This was a very enjoyable read. I liked that it was a novel dominated by collecting and grinding through data to solve who did it and why. Instead, it was a novel lit up by the diverse set of women who lived in the village and were associated with the crime.

At first, I was a little put off by how many of the women declared themselves or were declared by their friends to be stupid. Then I realised that with one charming exception, the 'Oh, I'm so stupid about such things' stance was camouflage that hid both secrets and intellects.

I liked that almost all of the characters were likeable to a degree. There was no obvious evil witch in their midst wreaking havoc just ordinary and sometimes admirable women making the best of things, Except for whoever it was who was killing people and even they seemed to be taking no joy in their actions.

This a Miss Marple novel (although she would protest, modestly, that she merely shared a few thoughts and that it was that bright young policeman who solved the crime) and her way of looking at who people really are, her lack of trust in who people present themselves as being and her resigned acceptance that even nice people may find a good reason to do bad things, set the tone for the story. One consequence of this is that the novel, published in 1950, gives some fascinating details of village life after World War II. How migration had changed the character of the village by adding people who had not grown up there or been introduced by people whom one knew and trusted but who had rather presented themselves and their story on arrival and built their lives anew. How the continuation of rationing had drawn all of the women in the village into an illegal but taken-for-granted barter system that combined intimacy with complicity. How much loss the war had imposed on families, how much dislocation it had caused, and how much change it had driven, particularly in the lives of women. Taken together, these things painted a picture of village life in transition with everyone having to adjust to new and unasked-for realities and, for the most part, supporting one another in muddling through.

For me, this credible, fallible, very human context made the murders into violations that seemed much more unforgivable than the deaths in the Poirot books where it often seems that bad people kill other bad people in clever ways for trivial reasons. In this book, the people do not deserve to die and the killings destroy the murderer's peace of mind as well as spreading grief throughout the village.

I've always preferred Miss Marple to Poirot, She's scarier than he is but more human. She sees the world clearly and expects very little of it but never descends into bitterness. She hopes that people will do the right thing but has is never surprised when they do the wrong thing or the easy thing instead.

For me, the biggest difference between Marple and Poirot is that, to Marple, murder is not a game. It's not a puzzle to be solved with the little grey cells. It's a tragedy in progress, an eruption of evil that must be contained and stopped. The whole novel is coloured by this way of seeing the world and is the richer for it.

The plot was clever, if a little improbable. The explanations all worked although I paid them little attention in the end. I'll remember the deaths and the grief long after I've forgotten the mechanics of the plot. ( )

I have always liked Agatha Christie but have never read any of her Miss Marple stories. I will be changing that now. This was a great book. ( )