Customer Reviews

A Murder is Announced: A BBC Full-Cast Radio Drama (BBC Audio Crime)

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Although first published in 1950 "A Murder Is Announced" by vaunted mystery writer Agatha Christie has lost none of its zest. Deemed a classic in its genre this suspenseful tale is ably represented by British voice and television actress Rosemary Leach.

When invitations are sent reading "A murder is announced, and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6:30 p.m.," everyone, including the indomitable Jane Marple, would anticipate an unusual party game. Such as, someone will be chosen as the murderer, the room is darkened, and the victim meets his fate.

It's not all fun and games when a real dead body is found. Miss Marple, on your mark! With her inimitable skill Agatha Christie allows listeners to enjoy solving the crime, step by step, just as much as Miss Marple does.

Curl up in an easy chair and revel this remarkable tale wonderfully read.

- Gail Cooke

Like with "The Moving Finger," this is a Christie mystery I read maybe 5 years ago and then picked up again just recently. And, similar to that one, I somewhat remembered the solution to this mystery, though I couldn't remember nor ever quite reconfigure the logic behind it.

For those who don't know, this excellent mystery starts off with a murder being announced in the personal ads in the local village paper. Somewhat akin to the irony of "Gross Pointe Blank" - where nobody believes that Cusack is a hitman because he states it directly - no one believes that a murder will really happen. Who would advertise such a thing? And so, in a predictable English manner, all the neighbors turn up - each insisting they just happened to drop by.

Thus begins a subtly humorous and mind-bending tale. After reading a number of poor books lately, I have to say that it felt good to be back in Agatha's capable hands. She develops a small pool of likable characters that you can keep track of...and never really trust. She throws out red herrings galore and keeps you on your toes as you try to fit together the random jig saw piece clues handed to you. Of course, Miss Marple is on to things fairly early, but will you be?

Of note in this particular Christie mystery:
- In addition to Miss Marple, Christie develops a likable & capable if slightly lackluster inspector in Craddock. I think it shows Christie's continued desire to mix things up and try new crime-solving combinations
- The time period is right after WWII, and so you pick up on what life was like in Britain in that time period. There is reference to food rations, Mittel European servants, reduced amounts of hired help, shifting of the population (even in small towns), an increased amount of suspicion with foreigners, etc. It's all very interesting.
- This is one of the few murder mysteries I remember with a real lack of rich/titles characters. There are a few in the background, but they don't play in the main plot at all. It was quite nice to read about working folks and their lives.
- Christie sets up several foils with the number of middle aged women in the book. I've never read a British novel where 3 main characters were weak minded (Bunch, Murgatroyd, and Dora), but Christie is able to develop each with distinction. However, each woman's relation with a strong woman (Marple, Hinch and Blacky) makes for an interesting study. (BTW - It is unclear if Murgatroyd and Hinch are a gay couple. Certainly, it seems possible, but Christie doesn't focus on that.)

This was my first Miss Marple mystery but by no means my first Christie book. I have enjoyed the different way in which the sharp mind worked over Hercule Poirot's genius but truth be told, Miss Marple as good as she was didn't appear in the book too often. This was also the time I figured out who the murderer was, more likely because I have read a lot of Agatha and knew her to be a trickster when it came to fooling the reader but also partially due to clues given out fairly this time. The final answer made total sense and there were a few things that were twisted and few truths were new to me but overall it all came together , so those who pay attention can figure it out.

Murder is announced - in deed it is, in a local Gazette that everyone reads in Chipping Cleghorn. When everyone assumes it's some sort of a party they get a huge surprise that a murder does take place and one of the attendees is somehow responsible. I will not give anything else away but the story has a great setting and there are tons of clues. I felt like a grand detective reading all the accounts and enjoyed the old-fashioned talk and mannerisms. The house of Letitia Blacklock has been violated and her closest friends, neighbors and family members are the only ones who could have dipped their fingers in the dark pool of death. Miss Marple enters the book and shines some light on interesting family relations and past that wants to be forgotten with a few unlucky turns for some of the members of the party. When more deaths happen the police know they must act quickly or there won't be anyone left.

The only problem I had with the book was the amount of characters; my head was spinning and I was dizzy trying to gather them all up in my mind. The names were also similar and long some making me a bit batty but overall I enjoyed the book and loved the cozy setting marred with chilling death hiding in the dark corridors of the Blacklock house. I do recommend this but it left me with a bit of a headache at the end and I was anticipating the ending to finally come and bring my brain some relief. Murder is nasty business and Christie knew how to work it to her advantage.

- Kasia S.

In A Murder is Announced, Agatha Christie's fiftieth detective story, and surely the best of the Miss Marples, "the latest idea is to advertise one's murders beforehand", by placing an advertisement in the paper-hence the title. And so, "once more a murder is announced-for the benefit and enjoyment of Miss Marple."

The setting is Chipping Cleghorn, which is perhaps Christie's best-drawn village setting-and certainly the quintessential Miss Marple novel. Christie vividly captures the feeling of how "the world has changed since the war... Fifteen years ago one knew who everybody was... If anybody new-really new-really a stranger-came, well, they stuck out-everybody wondered about them and didn't rest till they found out. But it's not like that any more. Every village and small country place is full of people who've just come and settled there without any ties to bring them... And people just come-and all you know about them is what they say of themselves... Nobody knows any more who anyone is." It is this feeling of insecurity Christie admirably captures that allows the ingenious plot-quite simply one of her best-to take place. Despite the beauty of the village, however, the simple rural cosiness, "there was a nightmarish feeling at the back of [Detective Inspector Craddock's] mind. It was like a familiar dream where an undertone of menace grows and finally turns Ease into Terror..." Neighbour cannot trust neighbour, and the tension slowly mounts-no atmospherics here, simply first-rate characterisation, with Christie particularly good at depicting elderly spinsters, with a sympathetic treatment of lesbianism and of old age.

Miss Marple's statement that "one is alone when the last one who remembers is gone. I have nephews and nieces and kind friends-but there's no one who knew me as a young girl-no one who belongs to the old days. I've been alone for quite a long time now" captures the whole feeling of the book-elderly spinsters living in solitude in the country, dependent upon each other for their comfort. At the heart of the novel are five old women: Miss Marple, the detective, "the finest detective God ever made. Natural genius cultivated in a suitable soil..."; Miss Blacklock and Miss Bunner; and Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd. Miss Blacklock and Miss Hinchcliffe are the dominant partners, shrewd and capable; while Miss Bunner and Miss Murgatroyd are woolly-minded and amiable, dependent upon their stronger-minded friends for security. Yet when Miss Bunner and Miss Murgatroyd are both murdered, the true depths of the feelings-of the dependency-Miss Blacklock and Miss Hinchcliffe felt is made apparent. These portraits of love and grief are unrivalled anywhere else in Christie's books, and show her ability to create human characters.

Miss Marple herself is at the top of her powers, actively detecting. Sir Henry Clithering remarks that "an elderly unmarried woman who knits and gardens is streets ahead of any detective sergeant. She can tell you what might have happened and what ought to have happened and even what actually did happen! And she can tell you why it happened!" Although she deprecates her abilities, modestly claiming that she has "no gifts at all-except perhaps a certain knowledge of human nature", her ability to reason from both material clues and dialogue is seen at its best; and she is an active player for once, reasoning and sleuthing like the best of them.

Setting and characterisation aside, the plot itself is one of Christie's best. It is complicated, "all so complex, nearly all so trivial and if one thing isn't trivial, it's so hard to spot which one-like a needle in a haystack", but not cluttered-one of Christie's gifts. The motive, stated quite clearly from the beginning, is money, and Miss Marple "know[s] only too well the really terrible things that people will do to lay their hands on a lot of money." Yet the identity of the real beneficiary / murderer is so well-hidden, aided by "the most amazing impersonation", that the reader will never work out the meaning of the clues, despite Miss Marple's listing them.

"You could get away with a great deal if you had enough audacity", Miss Marple reflects at one point-and both murderess and author do have enough audacity.

Although this is a great book--if you like Agatha Christie for fun, pastime reading--this edition infuriated me. One of the key clues to solving this slowly building, engaging mystery came in the form of an occasionally and purposefully misspelled word. (I won't say anymore!!!) I caught the misspellings as I was reading the book, and yet I overlooked them because the book had several egregious typos in it--leaving me to assume that the misspellings were typos too!!!

WRONG!

When, at the end of the book, I discovered the importance of some of the misspellings I felt cheated!!!

This goes to show you how important copyeditors can be. Granted, not the most glamorous job, but if they do it wrong...erg!!!

Oh...the edition I read: Paperback with a purple cover, Pocket Books (Simon and Schuster)--though it doesn't say the year. The cover art is copyrighted 1987, and it looks like the book is the 31st edition (??). Definitely avoid this one!!

When a personal item in the Chipping Cleghorne Gazette invites people to a murder at the home of Miss Blacklock, they show up to be part of the excitement. However, when a young man suddenly springs in on them with a revolver, and then quickly ends up dead, the party turns out to be anything but entertaining. The police are baffled as to what happened and why, and that leaves only one person who can unravel this mystery - Miss Jane Marple!

Jane Marple was the literary creation of that most famous of English mystery writers, Agatha Christie (1890-1976). For those of you unfamiliar with Miss Marple, she was your stereotypical elderly spinster-lady, who loves to gossip and grow her flowers. But, even more, she has a razor-sharp mind that she uses to solve mysteries, using her own brand of lateral thinking that allows her see clearer than anyone else around her.

This is actually Agatha Christie's fourth Miss Marple novel, written in 1950. (The first one was The Murder at the Vicarage (1930), and the second one was Sleeping Murder, which was written in 1940 but locked away to be published after Ms. Christie's death in 1976.) Overall, I found this to be a fascinating read. If you love a good mystery, then get this book - it is a great mystery, one of the best ones ever written. I give this book my highest recommendations!

What "improvements" have been made for the Signet edition? There are already major differences in punctuation, word choices, and scene breaks between the original Collins and Dodd Mead editions of this novel. There are further differences between the Dodd Mead editions republished by Random House/Avenel and the Dodd Mead editions republished by Simon & Shuster/Pocket. There are further additions still in the Bantam, Berkley, and Black Dog & Leventhal editions. For every publishing house putting out her works, there seem to be a new batch of editors altering Agatha Christie's words and the sound of her voice. What's the matter with these publishers? Whose voice do they think we want to hear when we sit down to a novel by Agatha Christie? And what will she sound like twenty years from now? It's frightening that her estate has failed to see the importance of guarding her words as she wrote them. Please tell me I'm not the only one here who senses that a crime has been committed.

Although first published in 1950 "A Murder Is Announced" by vaunted mystery writer Agatha Christie has lost none of its zest. Deemed a classic in its genre this suspenseful tale is mesmerizing.

When invitations are sent reading "A murder is announced, and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6:30 p.m.," everyone, including the indomitable Jane Marple, would anticipate an unusual party game. Such as, someone will be chosen as the murderer, the room is darkened, and the victim meets his fate.

It's not all fun and games when a real dead body is found. Miss Marple, on your mark! With her inimitable skill Agatha Christie allows listeners to enjoy solving the crime, step by step, just as much as Miss Marple does.

Curl up in an easy chair and revel this remarkable tale.

A murder is to take place on Friday at Little Paddocks at 6:30 p.m., its all assumed a joke in poor taste, is its aim to mock the somewhat nosey inhabitants of chipping cleghorn or is something more sinister afoot, no doubt when Miss Marple becomes involved in the web of murder its transparently clear...
This in my opinion with he possible exception of nemesis is the finest marple I have read, the plot runs smoothly and lulls one into a wonderful idyllic 1950's world till we are snapped back out by a series of wicked though fabulously staged murders. My personal favourite the strangulation, this book grabs your attention and for one of the first times we feel miss marple has the wool pulled over her eyes she seems somewhat detached from the plot only really flourishing at the end sealing the murders fate like the ambassador of justice this "old pussy" is. The mismatched disjointed plot is no literary mistake but adds a wonderful style which really catches the reader by surprise, the cruel pursuit of money and comfort after a life of repression is a fine example of what miss marple chooses to call human nature, do not miss this book it will enchant every type of reader with the simplicity yet genius of the crime executed.

When a murder is forecasted in a local paper to occur in the quaint village of Chipping Cleghorn, none (well, perhaps one) of the locals knows what to expect. As the townspeople show up at the specified time and place, most anticipate a murder game of sorts. As readers, however, we feel certain that this will be no empty announcement of murder. And indeed, murder soon bursts upon the scene.

A Murder Is Announced is the nineteenth Agatha Christie book that I have read, and it certainly does not disappoint. However, it does happen to be the first Christie mystery in which I've been able to correctly identify the culprit, and this overwhelming hunch, surprisingly, came to me early in the novel. Expecting to be disappointed since I thought I had solved it, I read on. Well? As it turned out, I was correct in finding the murderer. And yet Christie includes myriad details that I had no idea about, making the story more and more intriguing and revealing specifics of the murder that only the most astute reader will deduce. I thought I had solved it, but I had in fact only seen the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

An aspect of the novel that I particularly enjoyed: Christie employs a (partially) omniscient third-person point of view, allowing us, for at least a short time, to follow Miss Marple's thought processes, which aren't always revealed to us in the other Marple mysteries.

Though I said previously that the novel does not disappoint, I must admit that my only (very slight) quibble about the book is that some of the relatively significant characters might have been present in the storyline more often. This is a mere trifle, though. Some readers might protest Christie's use of amazing and almost-unbelievable situations and coincidences. I, for one, enjoy them--I'd rather read an ingenious mystery that's slightly far-fetched than a realistic one that's predictable.

All in all, this is a fine read, and one that can be readily taken in one sitting, thanks to a plot that constantly reveals new twists and turns. I'd highly recommend it.