A Caribbean Mystery

A Caribbean island is where Agatha Christie has set this mystery. Miss Marple the older woman who understands people so well has been giving a holiday thanks to her nephew. The location is set now the murder. Major Palgrave loves to tell stories, he has a list that he can regal people with. One is about a murderer and he has made the mistake of starting to tell this story. Miss Marple is the chosen recipient of the tale. Unfortunately, the murderer may be close and will not let their story be told. Other deaths follow as Miss Marple tries to piece together the clues. I enjoyed the plot and the ultimate murderer in the book. The supporting characters were great, my favorite is Mr. Rafiel. Miss Marple is the second famous detective that Agatha Christie created. She is the little old lady who likes to talk but has the most intelligent mind, that all criminals should fear.

It\’s hard to constructively complain about a murder mystery book. Agatha Christie\’s 1964 novel \” A Caribbean Mystery: A Miss Marple Mystery (Miss Marple Mysteries Book 10) \” is written fairly decently, but suffers from two issues. First, there are just too many red herrings here. You can barely swing a cat in the book without hitting some ne\’er-do-well in the head. But, of course, Christie\’s using that to hide the real perpetrator. That leads to the bigger problem: from some of the key \”evidence\” we\’re given, it just seems like the bad person is too young for what\’s happened. It would be a spoiler for me to say anything more. But, I just wasn\’t happy with whodunit. So, I\’m rating the book at an OK 3 stars out of 5.

Trying to work out some sort of consistent rating system for my current Christie binge. Some I clearly remember the twists, and can see them coming, but am still blown away by how she gets there, those are easy, her five star classics. Some are clunkers that barely held my interest the first time I read them, 30 years ago. Those can go as low as two stars, since there is always some merit to the full-fledged stories. It\’s just the middling ones three to four that leave me unsure. I didn\’t remember enough about this one to remember who ended up being the baddie or final victim (not a spoiler, as the Christies with only a single murder victim are few and far between, outside of the short stories). Think I got it partly confused with another one where the lead goes to an island/resort locale. But, it had all the elements that make Christie fun, the old soldier, the clergyman and family, and what I\’ve taken to calling Marplimony – marriages that only seem to exist for the sake of driving a minor plot point. It was fun, and the interaction with Mr. Rafiel was great, makes me sad that this is the only time we meet him before his end in the last Marple. But, nothing really special, and I\’ll probably forget which of the couples holds the black widow by the time I get a hankering to work my way through some Christies again. Oh well, that\’s not such a bad thing, do enjoy sometimes being surprised by a book I\’ve read before, even if it means that it was one of the more mediocre ones.

Christie is a proven mystery master, no doubt, as most of her stories show. But it’s pretty obvious this one is far less than her best writing. Though it was apparently written later in her career, it moves slowly with poor character development and in fits and starts which prevent smooth transitions. I grew frustrated at the simplistic and incomplete dialog as well as the lack of common sense on the part of the characters. Not one of Ms. Christie’s best. As others have mentioned, don’t let this novel deter you from her other excellent and intriguing writings.

This was up to Ms. Christie\’s usual high standard where the killer is the person you least expect. The novel gave me a great deal of pleasure and part of the fun was seeing Ms. Marple not just outside St. Mary Mead but out of England in a totally different environment. The supporting characters are great and contribute the novel\’s suspense. This is a good book and I recommend it.

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