Murder With Mirrors (The Agatha Christie Mystery Collection) [Hardcover]

Agatha Christie (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 184 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Books, Inc.; 1st Thus. edition (April 1, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553350277
• ISBN-13: 978-0553350272
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,237,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Agatha Christie was born in 1890 and created the detective Hercule Poirot in her debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920). She achieved wide popularity with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) and produced a total of eighty novels and short-story collections over six decades.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book!!, February 12, 2004

By 

Brad Daviach "Wizkidd0123" (Cleveland, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murder with Mirrors (Winterbrook Edition) (Hardcover)

I've read almost every single one of Agatha Christie's books and this one was a very enjoyable read. It manages to keep the read interested while providing clues at every turn without going on and on about trivial details like the condition of the world's gardens(It actually does mention the garden but only as an excuse for Ms. Marple to be approached by various characters and have pre-murder conversations. Fortuneatly, there are no garden based conversations in the book).

This book avoided the 5 star rating because there are certain points in the book where the whole base of it is reminiscent of a play. This would normally not be a very bad thing and nobody would care but near the beginning of the book, when Ms. Marple first arrives at her friend's "Gothic Monstrosity", she is literally aproached by EVERY character 1 by one, each one leaving the stage as the next goes on. This, although mercifully speeding up the conversations by lowering the need for description, makes you feel like a member of an audience at a play.

This is not necessarily a bad thing because although I can't tell you why without spoiling the plot, you really are meant to feel like an audience and cannot solve the mystery without the aid of Ms. Marple if you don't realize it. One of the only reasons this didn't recieve 5 stars is because that 1 point in the book just feels SO unbelievable. The other reason being that one character has no alibi and yet, the character is never suspected, nobody even realizes the absence of alibi and he/she (I won't tell you who as not to spoil the plot) is not the murder after all!

This does not subtract from the enjoyability of the book, however, so I would give it 4.5 stars if I could. The plot of the book involves Ms. Marple travelling to an old friend's house who she hasn't seen in 25 years because of the concern of another. I urge you to read and enjoy this book. ^_^

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WILL SOMEONE LET THE WOMAN SPEAK?, May 8, 2008

By 

allitwantedbythunder - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murder With Mirrors (The Agatha Christie Mystery Collection) (Hardcover)

What "improvements" have been made for the Bantam edition? There are already major differences in punctuation, word choices, and scene breaks between the original Collins (THEY DO IT WITH MIRRORS) 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 Signet, 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.

1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This book didn't keep the pace., October 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Murder With Mirrors (The Agatha Christie Mystery Collection) (Hardcover)

Compared to the rest of her books, Christie did not even try to make this one a stumper. After reading many of her books, a person is easily able to guess the whodunnit in this novel. The character's have distinct personalities and Miss Marple's detective word once again proves useful, but in the end, there is no suspense