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    Nemesis: A Miss Marple Mystery
    Nemesis: A Miss Marple Mystery
    Nemesis: A Miss Marple Mystery
    Audiobook7 hours

    Nemesis: A Miss Marple Mystery

    Written by Agatha Christie

    Narrated by Joan Hickson

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    In Agatha Christie’s baffling detective story, Nemesis, a letter from a dead man instructs Miss Marple how to conduct an investigation into a puzzlingly unspecific crime.

    In utter disbelief, Miss Marple read the letter addressed to her from the recently deceased Mr. Rafiel—an acquaintance she had met briefly on her travels. He had left instructions for her to investigate a crime after his death. The only problem was, he had failed to tell her who was involved or where and when the crime had been committed. It was most intriguing.

    Soon she is faced with a new crime—the ultimate crime—murder. It seems someone is adamant that past evils remained buried. . . .

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJul 3, 2012
    ISBN9780062234254
    Author

    Agatha Christie

    Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She died in 1976, after a prolific career spanning six decades.

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    Reviews for Nemesis

    3.5/5

    793 ratings44 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Another excellent book by Mrs. Christie, with one of my favorite characters: Miss Jane Marple. Her prior book, Passenger to Frankfurt, written when she was 80, got quite negative reviews. Critics called her prose “incomprehensible muddle” and “idiotic conventions”, and ridiculed her by dubbing her an “old dear.” In this book I see Miss Marple as Christie’s alter-ego. She constantly complains (to herself) what a muddled brain she is becoming, etc, yet, single-handedly unveiled the truth and found the criminal! And so Mrs. Christie took revenge on the condescending critics: at 81, she wrote another best-seller! (Just don't watch the movie before you read the book: the latter is way better and more intricate, although Joan Hickson does a wonderful Marple.)

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Joan Hickson gives a wonderful reading, she is the quintessential Miss Marple - on audio and especially in the TV series.
    • 5/5
      There is something very restful about hearing an excellent book beautifully performed.
    • 3/5
      Later Christie and perhaps not quite up to her usual standard, but still it *is* Miss Marple who manages to triumph in her delving - and, gets out of bed at the end to prove it.
    • 4/5
      Great reread for the hospital - thank goodness I was able to finish with the audiobook, reading impossible. Glad the narrator is the perfect Miss Marple, Joan Hickson. Passed the time wonderfully!
    • 3/5
      All I ever seem to say about Agatha Christie books is that they're quite fun, now I've read a bundle of them. I suppose they're all the same, in some ways -- the clue-puzzle is always at the heart of it, not so much the characters. She has a nice touch with describing some characters and getting them just right, of course, and I really love the image of fluffy pink Miss Marple as Nemesis. And I liked Mr Rafiel and his posthumous quest: that was quite a nice plot touch. I got to like his character more, somehow, even though he was already dead.

      The main downfall of these books, reading them now, is how dated the attitudes contained therein have become. Especially in this book, with the talk of mental illness and girls crying rape for no real reason, etc -- especially for me, given that my mother's a doctor and works for the police on rape cases, etc, and given that I'm quite irritated by the general perceptions of rape. But it's easy enough to ignore it, and remember that it was written in its moment, for me.
    • 5/5
      In Madly and the Jackal, the story again picks up where the previous book left off. Madly and Jackson have captured the spirit of Wolfhardt and as planned, embark on their quest to return him to his prison and attempt to get into Atlas. They have finally acknowledged their tie and love for one another, no longer denying that which was destined to be between them, and now having just found one another, they risk losing it all to save Atlas and the Mer race. Through Madly's magic and Jackson's strength and wisdom, they are able to get into the city and meet with Madly's father, making a plan to rescue her sister. Something isn't right though. Somehow they have been betrayed. Something much bigger and much worse is after them, and seeks to destroy them. Yet ironically, something that was meant to destroy them, brings them to the place that they commit to one another forever. As they discover and deepen their love for one another, the threat continues and the unthinkable happens. The Lore that they are seeking to capture, use their potions and magic to attempt to erase Jackson's memory of the love he has for Madly. Threatened with the loss of her mate, the one she cannot live without, Madly must pull herself together and capture the Lore, but something dark arises within her, threatening to take over her. Will her love for Jackson and his love for her be enough to pull her through, and can Madly ever recover from the hurt and betrayal that has broken her heart?Okay, I have to go kind of fan girl with this book. I absolutely and completely loved it. OMG - Jackson is simply to die for. How could I have missed this book and Jackson for so as long as I did. He is absolutely yumtastic. The drama in this book totally blew me away. I can't say too much without spoiling it, but at one point, my heart was so crushed I thought I was going to die. For real. I was riding an emotional roller coaster and could not get off. M. Leighton took this series to a whole new level with Madly and the Jackal. My heart strings were pulled upon until I wasn't sure if they could recover, but Leighton pulled this together in the end and I was finally able to breathe again, that is in between the hot, steamy, sexy scenes. I am still on the edge of my seat, anxious to see what is going to happen to these two and this series in the next installment. If you love paranormal romance and the stories dreams are made of, then Madly and the Jackal is one book you will want to put on the top of your TBR list. I can't wait until I have the time to sit down and read it again. With that said, let me leave you with this short excerpt from the book:Cupping the back of my neck with one hand, he pulled me toward him and pressed his lips to my forehead then leaned against it. "You know we can get through anything, right? Whatever it is?" I smiled. "I know. As long as I have you, the rest doesn't matter." "Then the rest will never matter, because you will always have me, Madly. Always." And maybe for the first time ever, I believed him.
    • 5/5
      I hadn't read an Agatha Christie for quite a long time and I had forgotten how delightful her books are. The crisp storyline and good characters made for a great read.
    • 4/5
      Good story. They're pretty sympathetic to rapists in the early 1900's though.
    • 3/5
      Although this is a very late Christie, written well beyond her golden era, the opening chapter is a sheer delight in the author's classic style, as Miss Marple indulges in a long, discursive meditation on reading the newspapers.Miss M., despite being considerably aged and lame ("On'e feet are not what one would like feet to be," she silently laments as she contemplates her infirmities), she's still very sharp, if a bit more scattered, and able to spot a killer with ease. The careful reader will spot the truth fairly early on, but getting to Miss Marple's conclusions is interesting, if not as much fun as the earlier novels. One thing that makes this less than her best book is the absence of some of the characters from her standard books. A good relaxing read, but not her best book.If you like Christie, do give this a chance.
    • 4/5
      An intriguing premise for the last of the Miss Marple's books. The narration by Emiliia Fox made this a compelling audio to listen to and enjoy, also bumping it up, in my opinion, from three to four stars. Written in 1971, with a few out-of-date views, I managed to put those aside (though some readers may not find so easy to ignore) since I found myself hooked on the storyline.
    • 3/5
      4 stars for the mystery, 2 stars for the Agatha Christie Problems. Agatha Christie Problems: the dangerous and harmful myth that women claim to be raped after consensual sex is repeated multiple times by many characters. They also like to talk about girls not being chaperoned by their mothers enough (a common Christie theme) and one mention that girls like bad boys instead of nice ones.
    • 4/5
      Another great Miss Marple mystery. Miss Marple is set with a seemingly impossible task. She may look like a sweet old lady, but looks can be deceiving.
    • 4/5
      Nemesis is a breath of fresh air. When seemingly ordinary people: dentists, librarians, park guides (what have you) get caught up in murders again and again and again I get annoyed by the coincidence...especially if it is an unexplained phenomenon. Miss Jane Marple addresses crime's ability to find her time and time again, acknowledging how odd it is for this elderly women to be an accidental investigator. I found that refreshing.On to the plot: Jason Rafiel, an extremely wealthy man dies. Seeing his name in the obituary section of the newspaper sends Miss Marple down memory lane. She immediately beings to reminisce about the deceased even though she only met him once on a trip in the Caribbean West Indies. Oddly enough, they were thrown together to solve a mystery. Imagine that! What a coincidence when she receives a letter from the dead man asking her to take on an investigation without any information. If she solves the case, she stands to earn 20,000. Is she to solve a crime or just a wealthy man's conundrum? Miss Jane Marple, elderly and nosy, is up to the task despite not knowing a single detail. Dear readers, this will be the final case of her investigative career. Back to the drama: Mysterious Mr. Rafiel sends her on a garden tour lasting two to three weeks and prearranges every detail for Miss Marple, right down to the people she needs to meet.A warning to those sensitive to a time before political correctness: there is a lot of ageism and sexism. I have a high tolerance for the days before being polite...except for when they say a woman is asking to be raped. "Girls, you must remember, are far more ready to be raped nowadays than they used to be." Whatever that means. I also took offense to the line, "Accuracy is more of a male quality than a female one." Again, whatever.
    • 3/5
      Miss Marple is surprised when the lawyers of the now-deceased Mr. Jason Rafiel, whom she met on her trip to the Caribbean. He's left Miss Marple a large amount of funds, if she can solve a mystery. The only catch is, he hasn't told her what the mystery or whom it might involve.An odd Miss Marple mystery. There's quite a bit of recalling of previous mysteries, which is delightful for dedicated fans of the series but Miss Marple also feels far more rambly than she ever has. The oddity continues with half the novel being taken up with trying to figure out what mystery Miss Marple is supposed to solve. Once we get there, it's a decent case to dig into but not the most charming or sparkling of her adventures.
    • 3/5
      Nemesis (1971) (Miss Marple #12) by Agatha Christie. This might be thought of as a follow up to A Caribbean Mystery for Miss Marple, the only connecting factors are a Mr. Rafiel and Miss Marple herself. After Mr. Rafiel’s death, Miss Marple is contacted by his lawyers about the will. She is bequeathed a sizable sum of money if she will take on a problem for him. It entails going on a bus tour of some of England’s great houses and solving the mystery of who, if anyone, killed him. No suspects are given, or motives, or any clue whatever, just that she is to do her thing, snoop until something shows up. Or until someone unsuccessfully tries to kill her.Intrigued by the proposition, she takes on the case, as it were.There follows a meeting with her 15 fellow travelers as they board the bus. Latina Glynne offers a clue or two along the way, Not part of the tour but acting as an agent for the late Mr. Rafiel, she takes Miss Marple away from the tour to stay with her and her two sisters. There the trio tell more about a girl called Verity that had already been mentioned by a woman on the bus. Seems that Mr. Rafiel’s son Michael was engaged to the girl. She is now dead and Michael is in prison.Miss Marple returns to the tour only to learn that a fellow tourist is in hospital, in a coma, the victim of a rockslide. Just before she dies Miss Temple tells Miss Marple to look for “Verity Hunt.”There s a lot of “she said- she said” talk that takes up a considerable amount of the book, but in the end the true culprit is nabbed, Michael is set free from prison, and Miss Marple collects her money. I feel this is not one of the best of the Christie stories. With this book we spend a great deal of time inside Miss Marple’s thought process and what a rather boring old thing that is. I prefer the other tales where the mystery is not only who done it, but what is Miss Marple, or Poirot, or whoever the detective is, is thinking. Trying to outwit the star of the show is so much fun, and quite often so difficult, that I feel drawn along until the final pages.
    • 3/5
      Miss Marple is asked to solve another mystery, but this time, the request comes from beyond the grave from a dead man and she isn’t even sure what the mystery is. Although Agatha Christie is always reliable, this one was enjoyable, but not as spectacular as some of her others.
    • 4/5
      Sleeping Murder was the last published Miss Marple novel but was written some 30 years earlier. That makes Nemesis the final Miss Marple novel that she wrote. And, it is a fine coda to the old sleuth.After learning of the death of Mr. Rafiel, whom she had met during “A Caribbean Mystery,” Miss Marple receives a summons to a lawyer. Mr. Rafiel has left instructions, and a potential financial reward, for Jane to take on her role of Nemesis once again and find justice. The only problem is that Mr. Rafiel has left no information about the case – at all. She doesn’t know who needs justice, or was denied justice. She assumes it has to do with a murder, since it was a murder that brought her into Rafiel’s circle. So, a good portion of the opening has Miss Marple blindly searching for direction. It isn’t until she is contacted to take an all-expense paid tour, arranged by Rafiel, that the suspects are introduced, and the mystery begins to unfold. The book is relatively long (compared to other Marple books), and I was initially afraid it would be a meandering, boring mess like “At Betram’s Hotel”. The first third was very slow, but it picked up significantly in the second half. I liked the mystery: a young man in prison for murder, the deaths of two young girls years ago, and a fellow passenger now. And, it made sense why Rafiel kept Jane in the dark – he wanted her to investigate without any preconceived ideas. The mystery was very good, but I enjoyed much more that Miss Marple was actively engaged throughout. There is no police inspector taking the lead; no frequent switching between character POVs. It’s all Jane – and that makes the story better than it would have been otherwise. Plus, Jane is quite old by now and the danger more acute when the killer begins to see her as a threat.Overall, while not Christie’s best Miss Marple mystery, I loved that Nemesis focuses almost exclusively on Miss Marple and that it tied to a previous book. The resolution was well supported, if a trifle predictable, and the final showdown was more exciting than one would expect from an elderly sleuth.
    • 5/5
      And so we come to the end of the line, the last Miss Marple in my ordered re-read. I'm sorry to say goodbye to Jane, who as always is the smartest cookie in the tin, the brightest bulb in the chandelier, the sharpest knife in the drawer. She takes on a posthumous challenge from Mr. Rafiel, whom we met in A Caribbean Mystery, and solves a decade-old multiple murder mystery without dropping a stitch in her nonstop knitting of babies' jackets and fluffy pink shawls. What a woman.
    • 5/5
      I've seen several film versions of this story. I am not sure whether the book is best in this case or not. The TV series versions shift some of the scenes and even bring in Miss Marple's nephew as her travelling companion, and I rather liked those changes. The book is great, walking the reader through the case without giving anything away too soon or springing new evidence on the reader in the conclusion to solve the case. Some of the characters in this novel espouse awfully sexist perspectives on women, which I though interesting since the sleuth is a woman and so is the killer in this book. Miss Marple seems content to let her example answer all the sexism and ageism she encounters, but clearly the author was addressing gender stereotypes and other prejudices through her characters in this novel.
    • 4/5
      I didn't remember this book very well at all, but of course I have seen the Joan Hickson adaptation. Even so, I found that I was not completely sure about who did it (I remembered that it was one of the sisters but Christie was very good at her misdirection!)

      Emilia Fox did a fine job narrating.
    • 2/5
      ‘She’s going to take it on, is she? Sporting old bean,’ he said. Then he added, ‘I suppose she knows something of what it’s all about, does she?’ ‘Apparently not,’ said Mr Broadribb.
      I would have reviewed this one a while ago, right after I read the book, in fact, but I really didn't want to be reminded about much of the book.

      I have really grown to dislike Miss Marple and this book is a fine example of everything that bugs me about her character.

      From her innate xenophobia:

      "The fourth chair was occupied by Mr Caspar whom Miss Marple considered as not sufficiently conversant with the English language to matter."
      ....
      "Miss Marple had never quite succeeded in abandoning her Victorian view of foreigners. One never knew with foreigners. Quite absurd, of course, to feel like that – she had many friends from various foreign countries. All the same . . . ?"
      to her being a judgmental old busy-body:

      "One of them was very definitely the complaining type, one who would want to have seats at the front of the coach or else would make a point of having them at the back of the coach. Would wish to sit on the sunny side or could only bear to sit on the shady side. Who would want more fresh air, or less fresh air."

      and a little bit deluded - though it was weird to even read about this potential love interest:

      "Poor Mr Rafiel. The ship that had passed in the night had been an interesting ship. Once you got used to his being rude, he might have been quite an agreeable man? No! She shook her head. Mr Rafiel could never have been an agreeable man. Well, she must put Mr Rafiel out of her head. Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing; Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness."

      I have not read The Caribbean Mystery, yet, but I somehow doubt there was such a thing in it as a blossoming romance between old Marple and Mr. Rafiel.
      Just as I know there is a disconnect between this utterance...

      "Miss Marple packed a suitcase bag, went to London, booked a room at a modest hotel – (‘Ah, Bertram’s Hotel,’ she thought in her mind, ‘what a wonderful hotel that was!"

      ...and the fact that Marple disapproved of Bertram's Hotel by the end of the book (At Bertram's Hotel) written six years before Nemesis. So, having paid a little attention, I found this book to be containing more "continuity errors" than I can put up with.

      Anyway, I won't give anything away about the somewhat far-fetched plot but Marple is not the only bone of contention with this book. As others have also summarised, there are also concerns with the book with respect to the issue of victim shaming and the trivialisation of rape.

      I don't know if the poor quality of the story is down to Dame Agatha loosing touch with readers in her later work or what, but Nemesis pretty much made the decision for me that Miss Marple is not all she's cracked up to be.


      "She looked round the church in which she was sitting. It looked so peaceful. The reality of Evil was hard to believe in. A flair for Evil – that was what Mr Rafiel had attributed to her."

      Yeah, I think I'm with Mr. Rafiel on this one.
    • 4/5
      It's Agatha Christie, and a fun read, and it references a previous Miss Marple mystery. Plus, it has fun characters, an almost-impossible plot, and what's not to love?
    • 4/5
      In a sequel to "The Caribbean Mystery"; Miss Marple receives a letter from Mr Rafiel (now deceased) asking her to accept a quest for justice, but does not tell her what she will be doing nor does he give her any clues, but assuring her that there will be at least one Guardian Angel about looking after her safety.

      His subsequent letter sends her on a Historic Home & Garden tour where she meets a former headmistress of an acclaimed all girls school who is on a pilgrimage to make peace with the murder of a former student.... Mr. Rafiel also has arranged for Miss Marple to stay with "Three Weird Sisters" in a decaying manor, whom were friends w/ Mr. Rafiel and the guardians of the young murdered woman.

      The young murdered woman was to marry via elopment Mr Rafiel's troubled (bad seed) son, but she never showed up and the young man was put away in a mental prison for the murder of the young woman....

      At the same time of the first murder another young woman goes missing... and as Miss Marple investigates the Headmistress is crushed while hiking by a boulder.... On her deathbed, the Headmistress talks to Miss Marple and gives her more clues...

      I liked the mystery just fine, I figured out the killer & the details of the victims.... I did not care for the 2nd to last chapter which consisted of Miss Marple's overly long & detailed explanation of the murder, who did it, why, and how she figured it all out. In fact I skipped most of it!
    • 3/5
      These are mostly my notes - not much of a review....

      I heard a bit on RadioLab about Christie possibly having Alzheimers and using the book "Elephants Can Remember" as an example of her loss of words. Nemesis was published right before that book, and I can see where the writing seems to be not a tight as her other books. There are a couple of loose ends not addressed and word repetition.

      While the killer's identity was a bit of a surprise, it wasn't a complete shock. I found the "guardian angels" to be more of a surprise. Overall, this book was an enjoyable read.
    • 5/5
      At 81 years, Agatha Christie (1890 - 1976) is nearing the end of her writing life - in fact she will write only two more novels after NEMESIS although four will be published, the last one posthumously. 1971, NEMESIS - Miss Marple 1972, ELEPHANTS CAN REMEMBER - Poirot 1973, POSTERN OF FATE (Last novel Christie ever wrote) - Tommy and Tuppence 1975, CURTAIN (Poirot's last case, written about 35 years earlier) 1976, SLEEPING MURDER (Miss Marple's last case, written about 35 years earlier)The novel begins with Miss Marple sitting in her front room, no longer able to venture into the garden. The emphasis is on how much she has aged, as well as how times have changed.It takes her some little while to identify the name Rafiel that she reads in the death notices, and then things come flooding back about the holiday she spent in the Caribbean and the mystery she became involved in there. (See A CARIBBEAN MYSTERY).Mr Rafiel, in his bequest gives her the option of staying at home and continuing to do her knitting, or of undertaking a little task on his behalf, in her role as Nemesis, the harbinger of Justice. However she needs to discover for herself what injustice has been committed.When Miss Marple joins a Famous Homes and Gardens bus tour, ticket organised and paid for by Mr Rafiel prior to his death, she discovers she is one of sixteen passengers. She immediately notices that there are four other "elderly ladies", two in their seventies, more or less her age, and two in their sixties. As I am older than these two I was somewhat amused. Anybody who has been on a similar bus tour will enjoy her observations about the other passengers. Her categorisation of retired people being middle-aged seems a little inconsistent with modern terminology.There are times in NEMESIS when Jane Marple seems a bit "slow off the mark" but I think Christie does a good job in summarising why Miss Marple has had so many murders fall into her lap. I presume that Christie here had an image of her female sleuth as being just a little younger than herself, although for much of her writing life Jane Marple was actually older. In fact she was old when she first came on the scene, and seems not to have aged that much at all. The question of how old Jane Marple really is, is always an interesting contemplation.I don't think I have actually ever read this novel right through. I have seen various televised versions, but none quite matched the actual plot of the book. There is a lot of Christie's philosophy about the nature of sin, whether there are any truly unredeemable characters, whether there is a detectable miasma of evil. I came expecting to be a little disappointed with the quality of the writing, expecting Christie to write as an old person who maybe had "lost her marbles", but came away satisfied. Perhaps it did stretch the limits of credibility a little - Mr Rafiel seemed to have thought of everything - but it was a nice swan song for Jane Marple.
    • 4/5
      Often it is my lot to reflect on death and sadness and whatnot. Marple stories are a conductor of this mood, but never have I been affected so much as when I read Nemesis. After reading Nemesis, I logged on wiki as I wanted to know how many Marple books there are. The answer is, not many; about twelve or so. This book changed my allegiance. I like Marple a lot, and adored her in this book because she appears in it and is never relegated to the background.I like Miss Marple more than Hercule Poirot. There, I've said it! It is possible I'll change my mind when reading Poirot again, but I doubt it. Poirot got more eccentric as time went on and is difficult to relate to, plus I got tired of his little grey cells and cat like eyes. Miss Marple is perhaps the only Mary Sue that I've come across who doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. I don't know in what state of mind these books are written, and I don't know who or what is A. Christie's muse...but from the finished product I feel that Christie poured her soul into parts of this story.The mechanistic aspect of the plot is not original. For two of the essential points, the author combines two stories I've read in the past, one of them being 'The Body In The Library'. Having read these books in the past, I've been able to guess the importance of the disfigured face, the purpose of the greenhouse ruins. It's the details that I don't grasp. For example, I don't know why the former Head Mistress has never met the arch deacon for so many years. That is one thing that the murderer had no control over.This book earned 4 well deserved stars from me. I think by the nature of these books, it's unlikely that they will get a perfect score. The interviewing of suspects, the dishing out of red herrings, in my opinion prevent me from giving Nemesis 5 stars. One can not pay attention in parts of the chapters in the middle and still get a feel of the case. So what is so different? The difference here, is that Nemesis is the only Marple, the only A. Christie book that I'll read a second time.
    • 5/5
      Another one of Christie's Miss Marple mysteries. The central plotline hinges on the idea that a sweet fluttery elderly lady is an expert in evil and an instrument of justice for the Greek goddess Nemesis. Old sins have long shadows and new victims in this classic mystery.
    • 2/5
      In which I mostly skirt around my incredibly long and ever-expanding views on societal victim-shaming because who has days to type that up and people just want to know about the wacky British people, for godssakeNemesis starts very intriguingly, with Mr. Rafiel, introduced in A Caribbean Mystery leaving Miss Marple in his will twenty-thousand pounds, given she solve a mystery for him. Old hat for Miss Marple, right? Except she won't be told the who, the what, the where, or the when of the crime, only the code word "Nemesis".I feel a little guilty giving this a lower rating than A Caribbean Mystery, as it does feature a much more involving mystery, full of messed-up psycho-sexual dimensions to which Agatha Christie gives much more body than Caribbean trifle. But it is also in need of a judicious amount of editing: it takes a far bit to get moving, the same clues and recaps of events are repeated incessantly, and Christie's style heavily leans on dialogue where a little narration would be a lot more efficient. This undermines the solid core of the story Christie is weaving, but more problematic is her shockingly regressive views, which arise in several contexts, but most specifically as those that shame how young women of "today"(1971 is the publication date) act too "loosely".This is most egregious in some victim-shaming that occurs, which crops up not once but multiple times by several different characters. I chose one example to discuss, just because it's the most elaborated, but the other examples are much the same. **MILD SPOILERS, if you don't want to know anything about what the case is** The following are words from a crime/police-psychologist, who thinks the man in question does not have the personality of someone capable of the murder of a girlfriend for which he's been convicted. Said convict is a known compulsive liar, thief, gangster, delinquent baby daddy, and who was involved in a previous assault case with another girlfriend: (excuse the length, but I wanted to give you the fullest context necessary)"That [earlier case] told against him, of course. Not in the jury's mind, because of course they did not hear about that until after the judge's summing up, but certainly in the judge's mind [...] I made a few inquiries myself afterwards. He had assaulted a girl. He had conceivably raped her, but he had not attempted to strangle her and in my opinion--I have seen a great many cases which come before the assizes--it seemed to me highly unlikely that there was a very definite case case of rape. Girls, you must remember, are far more ready to be raped nowadays than they used to be. Their mothers insists, very often, that they should call it rape. The girl in question had had several boy friends who had gone further than friendship. I did not think it counted very greatly as evidence against him. The actual murder case--yes, that was undoubtedly murder--but I continued to feel by all the tests [...] none of them accorded with this particular crime." Yes, a man who fits many of the dimensions by which we define sociopathy, and who has a history of violence towards a girlfriend, is totally incapable of committing a murder (of which he was convicted even without the details of the assault-case being heard at trial, a trial where he had the best defense money could buy). He beat her, but he didn't strangle her, so he's clearly he's a nonviolent soul. Women who have had several boyfriends cannot be raped. She's lying. These later two implications are particularly horrible and hurtful, because besides being ugly and ignorant and false, are also much more prevalent even today than they should be in any right-minded society.**end spoilers**I'm not demonizing Agatha Christie. I haven't read enough of her to characterize her work as a whole or to really disseminate her worldview. But I do think it's very telling looking at the publication dates of her most popular works, that most of them were from the 30s and 40s and none of them were from the 60s or the 70s. As a character, Miss Marple represents to me a subversive celebration of qualities that are normally derided in Western culture as being stereotypical-elderly-people traits-- and so it's incredibly disappointing to have her instead be a figurehead of stereotypical qualities are just plain ugly.Note: Nemesis is the basis of one of my favorite Agatha Christie's Marple episodes (2007), staring Geraldine McEwan. It's a little camp and a lot of fun, and it irons out most of the unfortunate implications. I recommend the series in general. It's nice slight viewing that has a great sense of humor about itself.
    • 3/5
      This is the 9th c hristie book i've read. It came out in 1971, just four years before Christie's death in 1975. Miss Marple is given a vague assignment by a man she had encountered in the West Indies who has died. He seeks to have his wayward son cleared of a murder he doesn't think he committed. Miss Marple goes on the bus tour of gardens and houses in England designated by the dead man, and when the tourt gets to a certain town she is invited to stay at the house of three sisters. There are 2 old murders and one new one and of course Miss maple solves them all. The scenario nis very contrived and everything goes like clockwork, in typical Christie fashion. I read it with interest but it does not compare with the realy great Christie novels such as And Then There Were None and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. But it was OK.