Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case (Miss Marple Mysteries) [Paperback]

Agatha Christie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 12, 2011 | Series: Miss Marple Mysteries

Soon after Gwenda moved into her new home, odd things started to happen. Despite her best efforts to modernize the house, she only succeeded in dredging up its past. Worse, she felt an irrational sense of terror every time she climbed the stairs.

In fear, Gwenda turned to Miss Marple to exorcise her ghosts. Between them, they were to solve a “perfect” crime committed many years before.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A puzzle that is tortuous, surprising and finally satisfying.” (Sunday Express (London) )

“Miss Marple is spry, shrewd and compassionate.” (Sunday Telegraph )

“Miss Marple has endured as the quintessential amateur sleuth, using intellect and intuition to solve crimes. She is the sort of character that makes a cozy truly cozy.” (Nevada Barr, New York Times bestselling author of the Anna Pigeon mysteries )

About the Author

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English and another billion in one hundred foreign countries. She is the author of eighty novels and short-story collections, nineteen plays, and six novels under the name Mary Westmacott. She died in 1976.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reissue edition (April 12, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062073729
• ISBN-13: 978-0062073723
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #161,090 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

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Long ago Murder Haunts Young Newlyweds, August 16, 2001

By 

Antoinette Klein (Hoover, Alabama USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sleeping Murder (Mass Market Paperback)

Gwenda and Giles Reed surely must be ranked as two of Agatha Christie's most endearing characters. Too bad they didn't have their own series like Tommy and Tuppence. As young newlyweds fresh from New Zealand, they come to Giles native England looking for their first home. Gwenda is immediately captivated by a Victorian villa known as Hillside, but after she moves in, strange feelings of deja vu grip the young bride. Has she been here before? Is the house haunted? And who is the woman she can see lying strangled in the front hall? Refusing the advice of kindly Jane Marple to let sleeping murder lie, Gwenda and Giles embark on an investigation to clear up the alleged murder of Gwenda's stepmother and put to rest her eerie feelings that her own father may have been the killer. As memories of past events flash through her mind, she and and her husband chase a trail of clues involving letters from abroad, a retired doctor, a former housemaid, a jilted boyfriend, and a mysteriously torn tennis net. Miss Marple is at the peak of her powers as she helps the couple unravel the clues and see clearly what is right before them. "It really is very dangerous to believe people, " she informs them. "I never have for years." But you can believe that when Miss Marple is present, the plot is thick with excitement, red herrings, and her uncanny ability to read human nature. Perhaps the best of the Miss Marple series, this is a fitting farewell to Christie's universally beloved spinster.

In 1987, an excellent adaptation of this novel was filmed for TV with Joan Hickson portraying Jane Marple.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Miss Marple's Final Bow, March 5, 2005

By 

Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

Hercule Poirot was Agatha Christie's most celebrated character--but over time Christie developed a love-hate relationship with her own creation. Written in the 1940s or 1950s, the novel CURTAIN was designed to both vent her mixed feelings about the character and to protect him from continuation via another author. It was not published until 1975.

But CURTAIN was not the only novel Christie had written earlier and then suppressed. Even as she grew less enthusiastic about Hercule Poirot, she grew more enthusiastic about Jane Marple, and given her sentiments about Poirot she elected to give Miss Marple the final word. Like CURTAIN, the novel SLEEPING MURDER had been written much earlier, and it was not published until the year of Christie's death: 1976, a year after CURTAIN.

The newly married Giles and Gwenda Reed have no close family but they do have independent means, and when Giles suggests that Gwenda purchase a house while he is out of the country she does precisely that: a charming Victorian named Hillside in the tiny coastal town of Dillmouth. In her husband's absence Gwenda has a great deal of fun restoring the home. But something odd happens.

She decides to have steps set in the sloping garden--and when the work begins, a set of steps is found beneath the soil in that same location. She decides to add a dining room door--and when the wall is examined workmen discover a door already exists in the spot, plastered over. Gwenda begins to doubt her sanity. Fortunately, she is distantly related to Jane Marple, who wastes little time in exploring the mystery. And what she finds is pure murder, a murder from out of the past that bursts into the present and threatens not only Giles and Gwenda's happiness, but their very lives as well.

Written near the peak of Christie's skills, both CURTAIN and SLEEPING MURDER are extremely fine mystery novels, and each one gives a suitable final bow to her two most memorable creations. In terms of plot, the applause must go to CURTAIN, which is a truly stunning twister--but in terms of style, the applause goes to SLEEPING MURDER, one of Christie's most elegantly written works. Recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Christie's Best, May 7, 2000

By 

Jocelyn Haeberle - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sleeping Murder (Mass Market Paperback)

This was definitely not the first Agatha Christie book I ever read and I know it won't be the last. But it was the first one that made me realize just what a talented writer she was. All the others I had read began to run together in my mind over the years, but with this one I still remembered "who done it" YEARS later. I'll never forget! It was also the first time that the main character, Gwennie in this book, seemed like someone who could have existed outside of Agatha's head. From the moment I picked this book up, I was good and hooked. I finished it in one sitting because I had to know what was happening to Gwennie. It remimded me a little of the movie Gaslight. You just KNOW that there is more going on than anyone is aware of. If you've never read an Agatha Christie book before, this is the perfect place to start. If you have read her, but not this particular book, don't wait any longer. You'll never regret it.