Our narrator is the male half of a charming pair – here a brother and sister – and he introduces us to the environs and characters of a charming village before propelling us into the mystery proper. In some respects, the opening of The Moving Finger parallels that of The Murder at the Vicarage.

But even as I begin this post, in ranking it as a Miss Marple novel, I find myself torn. This is still a novel that I love and highly recommend. The question of whether or not this issue hurts The Moving Finger continues to this day to divide Christie fans. The fact that her arrival is not only incredibly late but results in a complete reassessment of our narrator’s place in the proceedings must be taken into account. We will ultimately have to address the elephant in the room – or, given the paucity of Miss Marple’s presence on the pages of this novel – the elephant in the back yard dipping its toe through the parlor door. The basic premise of a rash of filthy anonymous letters, with its connotations of repressed spinsterhood, is also right up Miss Marple’s alley. Mary Mead, is just as rich and well-populated as Miss Marple’s home. Like The Murder at the Vicarage and the first (best) part of The Body in the Library, Finger is set in a village that, if not St. In this set of circumstances we find the name “Miss Marple.” Therefore, we can deduce that Christie intended from the start to write a mystery for that good lady. stripped the manuscript of backstory and character development, I assure you that my evaluation takes in every wonderful moment Christie intended for us to spend in the village of Lymstock.Īccording to John Curran, the first ideas for this novel were found in a Notebook item dated 1940.

Therefore, all my life, I have been familiar only with the complete, unexpurgated and correct version of this novel.

The Tom Adams covers captivated me, and Finger was one of the titles I snatched up. I can’t tell you when I first read The Moving Finger, but I was fortunate enough that by this time I had become aware that Stacey’s Bookstore in downtown San Francisco sold British copies of Christie’s books.

The moving finger book