Customer Reviews

The Moving Finger (G. K. Hall's Agatha Christie Series)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This story is told by Jerry Burton, an RAF flyer recovering from a crash. He has been sent to the village of Lymstock to get rest and quiet. Accompanied by his sister Joanna, Jerry soon finds that all is not as peaceful as he might have hoped. A series of poison pen letters detailing the explicit and often illicit facts of the residents' lives is causing quite a stir. The fear escalates when an apparent suicide is followed by a murder. With so much wickedness abounding, the vicar's wife calls in her old friend Jane Marple, whom she considers an expert on wickedness in village life.

This book is notable for its excellent characterizations. From the community-minded doctor's sister, to the charming spinster who rents the Burtons her home, to the dazzling governess of the lawyer's young boys, Mrs. Christie gives us a village filled with quirky and interesting people. Most notable is Megan Hunter, perhaps her finest young girl protagonist, who is transformed from the dowdy stepdaughter to an exquisite Cinderella.

The narrative style is light and entertaining, the romance sweet, and the murder quite deadly in this fun and always ingenuous offering from the mistress of mystery.

Mrs. Christie herself recalls this story in her autobiography as a personal favorite that has stood the test of time. As charming as it no doubt was when first published in 1943, The Moving Finger is a most satisfying read.

In addition to the delights one gleans from Christie's deft, skillful plotting, incisive wit, and rich characterizations, the true strength of "The Moving Finger" is Christie's examination of evil underneath the pristine surface. This "wickedness" lies not only beneath the beautiful exteriors of the sleepy village, but also beneath the shiny faces of its inhabitants.

Christie is quite adept at communicating the "atmosphere that seemed tinged with evil." When confronted with the distressing and distasteful poison pen letters appearing in the village, one of the characters exclaims, "Such a peaceful smiling happy countryside-and down underneath something evil....It's full of festering poison and it looks as peaceful and innocent as the Garden of Eden..." In addition, Christie recognizes the dark side of human nature, and that it is often extremely difficult to tell what people are really like beneath their poilte behavior. "I'm beginning to realize how little I really know about anyone...In everybody's life there are hidden chapters which they hope may never be known..."

Christie makes it clear, however, that this evil is not a supernatural phenomenon divorced from human intervention in a particulary perceptive and profound passage, "There's too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will...God doesn't really need to punish us...We're so very busy punishing ourselves..." And although "it isn't very pleasant to look upon the fellow creatures one meets as possible criminal lunatics," Christie takes a realistically pessimistic view of human nature and a depicts a village filled with "gossiping, whispering women" and "selfish, grasping natures."

"The Moving Finger" is an absorbing account of a sociopath. "Such apparently unlikely people do the most fantastic things." Christie reminds us that the most horrifying evil usually comes from the most unlikely source- seemingly upright, normal people who are hiding the most unfathonable and terrifying wickedness. "The Moving Finger" is one of her most skillfull and insightful productions.

I read almost all of Christie's books at one point 4 or 5 years ago. One of the last I hit upon was "The Moving Finger", and it turned out to be my favorite Christie mystery. I loved the main narrator - Jerry Burton; his neurosis, wit, simplistic arrogance and ultimately good heart were so novel to me, especially in a murder mystery. He was a breath of fresh air from the likes of Miss Marple and Poirot.

These many years later, I picked up the title again to see what I thought. I see now that the narrator reminds me in some ways of Grimes' main characters for her murder mysteries - intelligent, reserved, seemingly aloof, somewhat cynical, and ultimately kind bachelors written by females authors. Apparently I find this character irresistable as I love all of Grimes' work.

However, in going back and rereading some Grimes and some Christie, I am noticing how different their styles are. While I read Grimes' books the first time only 2 or 3 years ago, I find I can't remember the solution to her mysteries when I reread them because she buries her clues below a rich surface of character development. Christie, on the other hand, doesn't ever wander far from her murder mystery plot - no matter how much she may twist and turn it; and as soon as I started into this book I thought, "Oh, ______ did it". Even so, I enjoyed reading this little gem again.

That all said, in addition to having a neurotic narrator - which you may or may not enjoy - this mystery focuses on the reactions in a small country village as racy anonymous letters are received by everyone in town. Jerry Burton, the narrator, and his sister arrive from London for some needed R&R right about when these letters start becoming known and so are drawn in to the town's little scandal.

While Christie expounds on the psychology of those who write such notes, you have to watch all the details of the case. Like the murderer, Christie is masterful at getting you to focus on the wrong things...and then surprising you with the obvious solution. Very well done and a tribute to her uncanny gift of creating puzzles and then solving them for you.

In a forward Agatha Christie provided for a reprint of this book, she wrote of the pleasure it was to tackle one of the classic themes, and of the great pleasure she found in writing this book with its "cosy village atmosphere and characters".

The classic theme here is the phenomenon of the Poison Pen. The book is one of her shorter mysteries but one of the most cunningly devised. Adept at constructing puzzles, she opts for presenting this one as a first person narrative. The narrator is a young man recuperating from a flying accident, told by his doctor that he must "go and live in the country and lead the life of a vegetable for at least six months". With his sister he rents a cottage in a small English village "of no importance whatsoever".

Accordingly, when the poison pen letters begin circulating, it is this narrator, a stranger to the village, who decribes things as he sees them, retails all the local gossip, and reports everyone's suspicions about the writer of the letters. A murder and an apparent suicide follow, and we read of the efforts of the local police to investigate.

Miss Marple thus is introduced late in the book and, of course, she proves better at solving the mystery than everybody else. You will be an astute and alert reader if you discover whodunit before Miss Marple reveals all.

A young man and his sister from London rent a house in a country town so he can recover from his injuries. Shortly after arriving, they receive an anonymous letter accusing them of not really being siblings. They soon find out that people all over town have been receiving such letters. This leads to two deaths.

The detectives, this man and his sister do most of the sleuthing. Toward the very end of the book, the vicar's wife calls in Miss Marple who is able to put the final pieces together.

Agatha Christie usally "gets me" about half the time (as far as guessing, "who done it,"), and she got me on this one! A pleasant read.

This is a great book. The story is being told by Jerry Burton, an appealing narrarator, very human. Although the plot is great, the mystery nearly impossible to figure out, subtle clues presented throughout the book, this may make a better read the second time around, since its fun to find things that people said that meant more than one thing. The only reason it's not 5 stars is that Ms. Marple, Christie's charming lady detective, is called in as "an expert" where the local police have failed- vaguely reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes... She is hardly in the book at all, she simply explains it when the whole thing is over. Jerry Burton takes the limelight as the actual detective. Still, this is definetly one of Christie's best, and I highly recommend it!

This book is really enjoyable. It has an interesting plot, a satisfying mystery, and some very likeable characters. It was originally published in the early 1940s, but since the war is not mentioned or referred to in any way, perhaps it is meant to be set in the 1930s.
Jerry Burton is the narrator of The Moving Finger. He has withdrawn to Lymstock, a quiet country village, to recover from a flying accident, accompanied by his fashionable sister Joanna. Both of them are planning to take it easy, get to know their neighbours, and generally enjoy themselves. Then the arrival of an anonymous poison pen letter makes them wonder if they are as welcome in Lymstock as they had thought - until they find that there's an epidemic of nasty letters in the village. A worrying climate is developing, as people are beginning to take the contents of the letters seriously. And then Mrs Symmington, the local lawyer's wife, commits suicide after receiving such a letter. But since this an Agatha Christie book, we know that things aren't that simple.
Unlike a lot of Christie's books, it's the characters that make this one. Jerry is gruff but kind-hearted, and not afraid to say what he thinks. Joanna is likewise kind-hearted, but less obvious about it; willing to niggle and manipulate to challenge people's views or get her own way. Other characters such as Owen Griffiths, the doctor; his sister, the annoyingly hearty Aimee; and Mrs Dane Calthrop, the disconcerting vicar's wife, also capture the attention and move the story along. Megan Hunter, Mrs Symmington's daughter, is another good character, a "changeling" who doesn't fit into village life and is taken under Jerry and Joanna's wing.
So what, you may ask, is the connection of Jerry to the poison pen letters? Being an outsider, he isn't willing to sweep the matter under the rug, and works with the police to solve the crime - the solution of which is both ingenious, and something the alert reader (that is, a lot more alert than me!) has a fair chance of figuring out. Don't expect much Miss Marple in this book, though (which I was kind of glad of - the more I read of her, the less I like her) - she only turns up towards the very end to reveal all. It's kind of a pity she appears at all, since Jerry is strong enough to carry the book on his own, and MM's appearance is merely an in-joke to the established reader of Christie's books.
The Moving Finger has the usual Christie strengths of an ingenious plot, a clarity of style, and justice being done. Add to that good characters and something I particularly enjoy, a window into a world that no longer exists, and you have a very good book. I think it's one of her best.

"Such a peaceful smiling happy countryside - and down underneath, something evil..."
-- The Moving Finger, p. 28

After a wartime plane crash, Jerry Burton's doctor advises him to find a nice, quiet country village and "live the life of a vegetable" to speed along the recuperation process. Jerry and his sister Joanna settle in Lymstock, an idyllic country town that is three miles from a main road. It is a place where, as an astonished Joanna observes, "People really call - with cards!"

Jerry's peaceful, vegetative life in Lymstock is, however, soon shattered. A few days after their arrival, Jerry receives a malicious anonymous letter. The letter alleges that the Burtons are not brother and sister, but an unmarried couple living in sin. Jerry and Joanna are initially quite amused by the novelty of receiving such a letter, but they soon view the letter as a sign of something much more sinister.

All of Lymstock, it seems, has been receiving these letters. When a woman apparently commits suicide after receiving a letter, the search for the writer intensifies. After another character is murdered, presumably by the anonymous writer, a palpable fear settles over the community. Neighbor suspects neighbor and the whole of Lymstock wonders who amongst them could be capable of such despicable acts.

The indomitable Miss Marple makes her first appearance in the last quarter of the novel. For a less skillful writer than Dame Christie, the lack of the primary character could have made this story very tedious for the reader, but Christie's characters are so well-drawn and compelling that the reader does not notice the loss. The primary sleuthing has been done by Jerry and a few of the other residents of Lymstock, but only Miss Marple is able to connect the myriad of clues and bring the killer to justice.

The Moving Finger was originally published in the United States in 1942. For a novel that is over sixty years old, it has aged incredibly well. Agatha Christie's extraordinary understanding of human nature gives her characters and her stories a timeless quality.

One of my favorite Christie novels, The Moving Finger is a compelling read that will keep you guessing until the end.

Miss Marple is NOT a key figure in this story. She only comes in at the end. So if you were expecting one where she takes center stage, think again. The story centers around Jerry Burton, a recovering accident victim who retires to the country with his sister to recover. His doctor suggests the laid back life of the country will help him relax and heal, but little did he know Jerry would wind up involved in poison pen murder.

The village characters are picturesque, and Christie does a good job of keeping you guessing right up til the end. It really is a "moving finger" of suspicion!

Overall, a favorite read and reread!

Agatha Christie wrote "The Moving Finger" in 1943. The short 200 page novel is told in the first person by Jerry Burton. Burton is a Royal Air Force pilot who has been wounded in combat. He repairs to the quaint village of Lymstock with his sexy sister Joanna down from London. The tranquil bucolic milieu is torn asunder by the supposed suicide of a prominent lawyer's wife and later a gruesome murder. Whodunit?
Several of the town's prominent citizens have been receiving anonymous letters accusing them of scandal. Jerry sets out to discover the secrets of Lymstock. He also falls in love as does his sister with denizens of the tight knit community. When murder rears its ugly head the Burtons have the expert advice of the famous Miss Jane Marple.
The Moving Finger was one of Dame Agatha's favorite novels and it is also one of mine. This little book is a great introduction to the world of Agatha Christie. Enjoy!