[HarryT]

I've just finished "The Murder at the Vicarage", Agatha Christie's 12th book, and the first to feature "Miss Marple". It was originally published in 1930.

When a bullying and self-opinionated man is murdered in the vicarage in the small English village of St Mary Mead, suspicion immediately falls on a young artist who's been having an affair with the man's wife, but is it really that simple? A local resident, Miss Marple, isn't so sure that the solution to the murder is as simple as it at first appears.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's well-written, with a good story, and an interesting cast of characters. The narrator of the book is the vicar (in whose home the murder occurs) and he's extremely scathing about the gossiping, vindictive old ladies who make up the majority of his "flock", and of whom he considers Miss Marple to be the worst of the lot, always (often rightly, he has to concede) spreading gossip and taking the worst possible interpretation of events.

I don't think I'd read this before. Thoroughly recommended. An excellent book.

It's interesting to note in passing that the village of St Mary Mead, where Miss Marple lives, first appeared in the Hercule Poirot novel "The Mystery of the Blue Train", which was published two years earlier (it was the home of the main character of the novel, Katherine Grey).