Mostly Murders

Miss Marple asked gently: “Who was dead?” The answer came back quick and mechanical. “Helen…”

For Read Christie 2026, I’m going with the suggested choice of Sleeping Murder, a book I’ve read several times and really enjoy.

When Gwenda Reed moves from New Zealand to England with her husband Giles, a cousin to Miss Marple’s nephew Raymond West, she suddenly remembers a long-lost childhood memory of the death of someone called Helen.

Miss Marple strongly advises the young couple to let the past be forgotten, but Gwenda and Giles are determined to uncover the truth. They discover that Helen was Gwenda’s stepmother, but what happened to Helen? Did she run off with another man, or was she murdered? The answer is somewhere in the past, but in their attempt to find it, Gwenda and Giles risk attracting the attention of a murderer who thought they got away with their crime eighteen years ago.

Sleeping Murder is the twelfth and final Miss Marple mystery, and a great example of Miss Marple (and Agatha Christie’s) keen eye for details and understanding of human nature. Plant an assumption in someone’s mind, and everything they subsequently read will be coloured by that assumption, making red herrings seem like irrefutable truths, while the actual clues appear trivial and unimportant.

Agatha Christie doesn’t mislead people. She lets people mislead themself, leading readers to believe that they know the full picture when they in fact don’t know anything but what they have been told by people who are mistaken, biased, or straight up lying.

I was surprised by the solution to the mystery when I first read this many years ago. Since then I have reread it several times, and every time I enjoy spotting the exact places in the book where my assumptions led me astray and the clues that could have led me to the truth if only I had realised their full importance.

Agatha Christie – Crime classic