Month: October 2022

Written by (Various Authors)

SUMMARY:

In 2022, HarperCollins released this 370-page hardcover anthology heralding Miss Jane Marple’s return to crime-busting after forty-five years.  In short story form, a dozen female authors offer their own takes on the elderly amateur sleuth from St. Mary Mead.  Resurrecting some other familiar faces, this anthology consists of:

1. “Evil in Small Places” (by Lucy Foley): Miss Marple’s visit to a childhood classmate coincides with a choir member’s murder in the quaint English village of Meon Maltravers.
2. “The Second Murder at the Vicarage” (by Val McDermid): In a sequel to Christie’s first Marple novel, vicar Len Clement narrates the mystery of a former employee’s homicide inside his home.
3. “Miss Marple Takes Manhattan” (by Alyssa Cole): Set in the Early 1960’s, Miss Marple accompanies nephew Raymond and his wife, Joan, to explore New York City.  Comic mayhem ensues when they attend a dress rehearsal for an Off-Broadway play adapting one of Raymond’s novels.
4. “The Unravelling” (by Natalie Haynes): A merchant couple in St. Mary Mead is suspected of killing an enigmatic stranger after a public scuffle with the husband.
5. “Miss Marple’s Christmas” (by Ruth Ware): Sharing a low-key Christmas Eve with family and old friends, Miss Marple  contemplates who may have stolen a fellow guest’s valuable pearl necklace.  This tale spells out its homage to Dorothy L. Sayers’ Hangman’s Holiday (with Lord Peter Wimsey).
6. “The Open Mind” (by Naomi Alderman): In Oxford, a fatal drug overdose at a high-profile academia dinner makes Miss Marple suspect what really precipitated the tragedy.
7. “The Jade Empress” (by Jean Kwok): Aboard a cruise ship to Hong Kong, Miss Marple probes the ominous deaths of two passengers. 
8. “A Deadly Wedding Day” (by Dreda Say Mitchell): In a sequel of sorts to A Caribbean Mystery, Miss Marple and her friend, Bella Baptiste, probe a murder-mystery at the wedding reception of Bella’s strangely evasive niece. 
9. “Murder at the Villa Rosa” (by Elly Griffiths): A crime novelist seeks inspiration at a scenic Italian hotel, only to encounter some peculiar fellow guests, including Miss Marple.
10. “The Murdering Sort” (by Karen M. McManus): Narrated by Raymond & Joan West’s teenage granddaughter, Nicola, she describes how amateur sleuthing evidently runs in the family.
11. “The Mystery of the Acid Soil” (by Kate Mosse): Visiting a convalescing friend, Miss Marple stumbles into a situation where a woman’s disappearance is book-ended by two peculiar deaths.
12. “The Disappearance” (by Leigh Bardugo): Called home from London by an old friend, Miss Marple senses a roguish fiancé’s disappearance is linked to a young female gardener’s tragic death.

Notes: The book’s U.K. title is simply Marple.  Also, these stories aren’t contained by any internal chronology.  The stories by Ruth Ware and Leigh Bardugo, however, both clearly occur after The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side.  Given Dolly Bantry is evidently widowed at the time of “The Disappearance,” Bardugo’s story fittingly concludes this anthology.

REVIEW:

Whether by loving homage or by contractual design, Christie afficionados will spot regular name-dropping to Marple’s world, i.e. cases she solved long ago or old friends she knows.  Still, readers will be left to define their own good, the bad, and the boring amongst this fresh assortment of Miss Marple whodunnits.  It’s a given that some stories mimic Christie’s clichéd Marple formula by resolving a baffling mystery with last-minute, seemingly impossible deductions (let’s just refer to these clues and name-dropped culprits conjured up from thin air as ‘Marple-isms’).    

To minimize confusion comparing authors, the fairest means of discerning which stories are remarkable (or not so much) is briefly analyzing them one by one.

• * “Evil in Small Places.”  Though some plot details are too convenient, the opener is worthwhile.  Most significantly, Lucy Foley devises a final stretch that even Christie might well have applauded.
• “The Second Murder at the Vicarage.”  Including the Clement family’s welcome return, Val McDermid’s sequel is mostly promising.  Yet, like Christie’s worst cop-outs, this double-homicide’s solution resorts to Marple-isms where incriminating evidence late in the story isn’t fair game to readers.   
• * “Miss Marple Takes Manhattan.”  Briskly concocting allusions to timeless snobbery, communism, racism, and no doubt a few other ‘-isms,’ the author’s humorous snark surpasses Christie’s own propensity for societal jabs.  Bordering on parody, Alyssa Cole’s amusing wit places Marple and her family on unfamiliar and clearly less-than-glamorous ground.  Her sense of fun is definitely this collection’s most energetic highlight.
• “The Unravelling.”  Set within St. Mary Mead, one is led to expect a traditional Christie-style Marple.  However, faulty bio-science and a ludicrous ‘big reveal’ sabotage this tale, making it the book’s weakest inclusion.
• “Miss Marple’s Christmas.”  Besides its tribute to Dorothy L. Sayers, this likable Marple caper is reminiscent of Christie’s own Poirot novella: The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (aka Theft of the Royal Ruby).  Hampered by a predictable solution, the more significant hiccup affecting Ruth Ware’s tale is sluggish pacing.
• “The Open Mind.” Unlike Christie’s social commentaries near the end of her career (i.e., in-story rants re: anti-drugs; anti-promiscuity; anti-hippie, etc.), Naomi Alderman’s tale goes the opposite direction with near-sensationalism of early 1970’s drug use.  Two-thirds of Alderman’s mystery appear solid, but her final third collapses upon divulging the culprit’s absurd, practically eye-rolling motive and tactics.    
• “The Jade Empress.”  Though the solution isn’t a surprise, the mystique of a Marple whodunnit with an exotic Asian backdrop is intriguing.  Jean Kwok’s somewhat contrived plot isn’t the book’s best, but it’s far from its worst. 
• * “A Deadly Wedding Day.” The detective tag-team of Miss Marple and her Caribbean-born counterpart, Bella Baptiste, proves an exceptional treat.  One is left to wonder if this tale is a dry run on a possible Bella Baptiste series.  Even it isn’t, Dreda Say Mitchell’s storytelling concocts a high-caliber whodunnit that serves as one of this anthology’s best entries.
• “Murder at the Villa Rosa.”  One could construe this slightly odd caper as a bait-and-switch reflecting Christie’s notorious disdain for Hercule Poirot’s popularity.  With Miss Marple reduced to a secondary character, Elly Griffiths pitches this book’s second most original offering – that is, after Alyssa Cole’s.  Griffiths’ ‘whodunnit,’ in this sense, is reminiscent of mysteries occasionally found in the Malice Domestic anthology series.
• * “The Murdering Sort.”  It’s obvious that Jane Marple ought to be long dead by the time her nephew has a 17-year-old granddaughter.  That logic aside, Karen M. McManus still devises an intriguing legacy spin-off where Miss Marple’s great-great-niece, Nicola West, might become a British-American Nancy Drew. The story’s only goof would be a pair of character name typos.  Otherwise, this whodunnit is well-played!     
• “The Mystery of the Acid Soil.”  Openly referring to Marple’s “A Christmas Mystery,” from The Tuesday Club Murders (aka The Thirteen Problems), the plot hinges too much upon a reader’s knowledge of gardening.  Though Kate Mosse’s storytelling reminds one of classic Marple, the result is something of a bore.
• “The Disappearance.”  Like Kate Mosse’s tale before it, insights re: amateur gardening are necessary to keep up with Leigh Bardugo’s grim plotting. This book’s final tale, for the most part, seemingly has the makings of a satisfying whodunnit. The resolution, however, is marred by several Marple-isms, which diminishes the out-of-character ‘big reveal’ scene to a poignant yet hardly fair ending.             

No matter how much of a mixed-bag this anthology is, its dozen stories are worth anyone’s armchair sleuthing.  Hopefully, this classy literary experiment will serve as a prelude to a similar Poirot anthology.

*=Recommended!

ADDITIONAL FEATURES:

There’s a single-page introduction.  The book concludes with a section presenting the contributors’ mini-bios.

BRIAN’S ODD MOON RATING:                7½ Stars

Note: For an even more ambitious sleuthing anthology, one might consider “The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” edited by John Joseph Adams.