The Body in the Library

The Body in the Library is a vintage Miss Marple murder mystery. The crime takes place at Gossington Hall, the home of Colonel and Mrs Bantry who feature in several Miss Marple stories.

The Bantrys are both highly respectable and well respected people and the presence of the body of a heavily made-up bottle blonde sprawled across a bearskin rug in front of their library fireplace seemed, to say the least, incongruous.

Neither Colonel nor Mrs Bantry admit to having any idea who the young women is or how she got into their home, and Mrs Bantry’s first action is to call in her good friend Miss Marple – smart thinking!

Miss Marple’s investigations lead her to the Majestic Hotel in the seaside town of Danemouth and she (and Mrs Bantry) take up residence there among a motley collection of possible suspects.

Agatha Christie pulls the wool well over our eyes in this clever story starting with an ingenious piece of mis-direction and anyone who arrives at the correct solution on first reading has my admiration – I didn’t.

By the way, avoid at all costs the Geraldine McEwan version of this story – it’s dreadful! Joan Hickson’s is, like all the others in this series, superb.

You can get hold of The Body in the Library via the following links.

Back To Top Of The Page

Go Back To The Home Page