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Just finished "At Bertram's Hotel", by Agatha Christie, which was originally published in 1965.
Jane Marple, the elderly amateur sleuth, takes a holiday at London's Bertram's Hotel, a place of which she has fond memories from her youth. The establishment has retained a mixed Edwardian and Victorian atmosphere, from its prim staff to its elderly patrons. In its tearoom Miss Marple encounters a wartime friend, Lady Selena Hazy, who reveals that she frequently thinks that she recognises people in the hotel only for them to turn out to be complete strangers. Miss Marple is intrigued by her fellow guests, who include the famous adventuress Bess Sedgwick, 20-year-old Elvira Blake and her legal guardian Colonel Luscombe, and a forgetful clergyman, Canon Pennyfather. Miss Marple's curiosity about the hotel is interspersed with a back-story about a Scotland Yard investigation into a series of daring robberies from banks, mail trains, etc. (and naturally the two turn out to be connected!)
An excellent book: one of the best of the later Christies, to my mind. Interesting to note that Christie was 75 when she completed this book: the same age as Miss Marple herself is depicted in the book. Bertram's hotel is based (not the criminal elements of it, obviously!) on the real "Brown's" hotel in London.
Very highly recommended.
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