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    They Do It with Mirrors: A Miss Marple Mystery
    They Do It with Mirrors: A Miss Marple Mystery
    They Do It with Mirrors: A Miss Marple Mystery
    Audiobook6 hours

    They Do It with Mirrors: A Miss Marple Mystery

    Written by Agatha Christie

    Narrated by Emilia Fox

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    In Agatha Christie’s They Do It with Mirrors, the indomitable Miss Marple investigates some rather deadly doings at a rehabilitation center for delinquents.

    Miss Marple senses danger when she visits a friend living in Stoneygates, a rehabilitation center for delinquents. Her fears are confirmed when someone shoots at the administrator. Although he is not injured, a mysterious visitor is less fortunate—shot dead simultaneously in another part of the building.

    Pure coincidence? Miss Marple thinks not, and must use all her cunning to solve the riddle of the stranger’s visit … and his murder.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMar 26, 2013
    ISBN9780062265869
    Author

    Agatha Christie

    Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.

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    Reviews for They Do It with Mirrors

    3.5/5

    774 ratings39 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This is an engrossing Christie tale, with complex characters and several good twists as the story unfolds. However, I suggest seeking a different version of the audio presentation. I am a fan of Emilia Fox, generally, but here she let me down. Oh my, the horrendous ‘American’ accent she gives to Wally. Why oh why do so many talented British narrators go straight for that poor Southern dirt farmer accent when asked to voice absolutely ANY American character?? It is really maddening, and very unpleasant on the ears.
      I had to stop mid-chapter (5 I believe) and try something else.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      simply delightful!
    • 3/5
      Miss Marple is visiting a old friend when a murder is committed. Each member of the household (naturally) falls under suspicion. I felt the truth, when finally revealed, a little forced and unlikely but the book was well-written and enjoyable anyway.
    • 5/5
      Another pearl from Agatha Christie. As is generally the case, much better than the movie, although Joan Hickson does an excellent job as Miss Marple. Highly recommend this book to Agatha Christie fans.
    • 4/5
      Carrie Louise is in grave danger. Her sister Ruth just knows it..that is why she asks her old school friend Jane Marple to spend a month or two in Carrie Louises company. Ruth has set everything up, Miss Marple just needs to make sure Carrie Louise is ok! It is not long before Jane realizes Ruth may be on to something. It appears that someone has been trying to poison Carrie Louise and her stepson (from a previous marriage) has been found murdered in his room just hours after arriving on the grounds unexpectedly. Could it be the boys on the grounds? Her current husband is a renowned psychologist who feels young criminals just need proper guidance in order not to re-offend. Could he be wrong? Miss Marple quickly gets to the bottom of the mystery and just in time! I really enjoyed this one, it truly kept me getting and I was not quite sure where to point the finger.
    • 3/5
      At a delinquents’ home, Jane Marple investigates an unknown threat, at the behest of an old friend.

      Watching the Joan Hickson adaptation of "They Do It With Mirrors", I was struck by how many of the notable elements – the number of underage characters, the theatrical menace – struck me as rather un-Christie. Not surprisingly, reading the book shows that – as with many stories that venture outside characters she was familiar with – things begin to fall apart. "They Do It With Mirrors" is not a Marple highlight, but it’s an easy read. The strange setting – a country house doubling as an institution for troubled youths – is not very well realised, but the perennial upper-crust characters shine through in what is (intentionally or otherwise) a light examination of changing social mores.

      Miss Marple’s hawk-eyed, gossipy personality is – of course – perfect for an amateur detective. Far more than any of the other amateurs Christie offered over the years, Jane Marple’s ruthless cunning can ultimately unravel any thread of mystery. (Unlike Poirot, I don’t think she ever gets things wrong, which can, unfortunately, make the occasional climax – "A Pocket Full of Rye", notably – seem wantonly reckless.) However, these books can often lack anything regarding a thrill – one can’t help feeling that a more active detective might have provided this. It’s no surprise that the best of the Marple novels either unite her with a co-detective (officially or narratively) or at least see the spinster knuckle down on some true investigation. There’s nothing wrong with "They Do It With Mirrors", but it’s one of the least memorable Marples.

      [The U.S. title was "Murder with Mirrors". Perhaps they just wanted a title that assured you of the book's genre? Or perhaps, like me at eight years old, finding it on the library shelf, they found "they do it with mirrors" to be giggle-worthy. Puerile sort, perhaps?]

      Marple ranking: 10th out of 14
    • 4/5
      Yet another kookie, silly, fun Miss Marple mystery by Christie.There becomes a comforting sameness in these after a bit but thatdoes nothing to destroy the enjoyment of the story.In this one a family member is shot at a private rehabilitation center andMiss Marple must get to the bottom of it. Which she does with herusual aplomb.Again I recommend it and gave it 3 1/2 stars out of 5.
    • 5/5
      Great miss Marple. Good reader. Surprise ending. Loved it. Classic Christie.
    • 3/5
      Miss Marple was a bit more of a constant in this book than in others, which was quite nice -- I think it's best when the detective character is more of a character, like Philip Marlowe or Peter Wimsey, or whatever. In this book Miss Marple, and her childhood friend -- mostly her childhood friend, I think -- are the bigger attractions. The plot was, somehow, predictable -- either predictable to anyone, or just predictable because I'm getting far too used to Agatha Christie's writing and way of constructing a mystery.

      Carrie Louise is a sweet character, and probably the best thing about this book. I felt like the background characters were less clearly drawn than in some of these books -- nothing like the background romance that's in The Moving Finger, for example.
    • 4/5
      Miss Marple meets up with an old school friend, who asks her to check in on her sister because she's worried that something's just not quite right. Miss Marple agrees and pays a visit to said sister, who is also an old school friend, and who now lives with her third husband at the halfway home he runs for young reforming criminal types. As it turns out, it seems that someone may be trying to poison the sister, and Miss Marple is, of course, on the case.As usual, Christie gives us lots of red herrings and a myriad of characters and possible motives. And again, as usual, it took me nearly the whole book to suss out the culprit. Thoroughly enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      Loved re-reading this yesterday. Satisfying! So neatly thought through to the last detail.
    • 5/5
      I am re-reading this for a book discussion group that I have been leading all this year. We have now read the first 5 Poirot novels and the first 5 Marple novels. We have been looking for the development of both sleuths and watching Agatha Christie as she experiments with various plot structures.Miss Marple is in this novel from the very beginning. It is the first time this has happened. In the earlier novels she appeared after the action was well underway.While visiting her American school friend Ruth Van Rydock in London, Miss Marple learns that Ruth is seriously concerned for her sister Carrie Louise. She asks Miss Marple to visit Carrie Louise at Stonygates, her home in England. Miss Marple agrees to the visit. She is impressed by the size of the Victorian mansion, which now has a separate building for delinquent boys, the cause which engages Carrie Louise and her third husband, Lewis Serrocold. Carrie Louise has her family living with her, as her granddaughter Gina has brought her American husband Walter to England to meet her family. Daughter Mildred Strete moved back home after she was widowed. Stepsons Stephen and Alexis Restarick, now grown, are frequent visitors and are present during Miss Marple's visit. One of the first people Miss Marple encounters is Edgar Lawson, a young man acting as a secretary to Serrocold; Lawson shows clear signs of paranoid schizophrenia, but these are largely ignored.Miss Marple learns that Carrie Louise has experienced health problems incidental to old age. Nevertheless, Miss Marple is pleased to see that Carrie Louise is still the sweet, idealistic, and loving person she has known.One of the puzzles for the reader to solve is the meaning of the title. For a while, you read on, looking for mirrors, or at the very least, duplicates, but that is really a red herring.There are a number of interesting themes. One is the economic and social features of England post World War 2. The old customs and social barriers have been largely discarded. Old estates like Stonygates have largely been repurposed. Another is the attitude of Americans to what they see as the state of England.In this novel Miss Marple is included in his investigation by the police Inspector Curry, who is impressed by her powers of observation.We get a little more background to Miss Marple too. She and Ruth Van Rydock were friends nearly 50 years before, and had travelled to Italy.A number of the characters are not actually what they seemed to be originally.
    • 3/5
      Great way to spend a lazy afternoon.... book was extraordinary, but just simple a pleasant "listen".
    • 3/5
      Another Christie novel narrated by Emilia Fox, available on Hoopla.I read this (perhaps under another title?) years ago in middle school. I didn't remember any of it, even while listening. I enjoyed this one quite a bit. Everything in this story is relevant. Miss Marple is visiting an old school friend, the visit arranged by another school friend who thinks something is off at Carrie Anne's home. There is she and her husband, her daughter, the daughter of her late adopted daughter, two stepsons by her previous husband, her loyal servant, and a stepson by her current husband comes to visit. There are also various boys from the delinquent's school they run on site. SO when Mr Gulbrandson--her husband's son--is shot and killed, who killed him, and why?Miss Marple is her usual dithery self. And the solution is clever--and there are hints throughout. One of her better novels.
    • 4/5
      At a reunion with a friend from her youth, Jane Marple learns that her friend is very worried about her sister, Carrie Louise, whom Miss Marple hasn’t seen in decades. Miss Marple agrees to accept an invitation to stay with Carrie Louise should she offer an invitation, and she soon finds herself ensconced at Stonygates, the estate where Carrie Louise and her third husband rehabilitate juvenile delinquents. Miss Marple’s presence isn’t enough to avert the murder of Carrie Louise’s stepson from her first marriage. The murder occurred while the household feared another was taking place in a locked room. One member of the household must have viewed the goings-on in the locked room as a distraction to cover the murder. But which one? The spoiled granddaughter, her sullen American husband, the daughter with a chip on her shoulder, one of the stepsons from the second marriage, or one of the many troubled inmates?I have a soft spot for this book since it was the first of Agatha Christie’s novels I read many years ago. Miss Marple uses excellent deductive reasoning in figuring out what must have happened. “They do it with mirrors.” Of course, there are also the village parallels that make Miss Marple such a discerning judge of character.
    • 5/5
      Working my way through all of Christie’s Miss Marple books, I hit two fantastic installments in a row, including this. In Murder with Mirrors (or, They Do It With Mirrors) Miss Marple appears before anyone has actually died!Jane’s friend Ruth asks her to go and visit Ruth’s sister Carrie Louise because she feels sure there is something wrong in her household. Miss Marple takes her intuition seriously and heads to Stonygates, Carrie Louise’s home, where they have set up a foundation to help juvenile offenders escape a life of crime. Jane also meets Carrie Louise’s family: friend and companion Jolly, husband Lewis, daughter Mildred, step sons Alex and Steven and granddaughter Gina with her husband Walter. It isn’t long after arriving that Carrie’s other stepson Christian, on the board for the foundation, arrives unexpectedly – and is promptly murdered. Was he there on foundation business? Was it something to do with Carrie Louise’s health? There were couple things about this mystery that I really loved. First, Miss Marple is actually part of the story right and is involved from beginning to end. In previous books, I felt like she just showed up toward the end just to “solve” the mystery. Here, she is seeing everything unfold so her deductions gave the reader more. Also, this something of a locked door mystery, which I’m a fan of. Just about everyone has motive, but at the time of the murder they were all listening outside a door as Lewis had a violent confrontation with Edgar Lawson, one of the offenders. It’s possible one or more suspects could have slipped out, but how and why is where the fun begins. I thought the ultimate conclusion was excellent. The culprit made perfect sense – if you were paying attention!
    • 4/5
      Wealthy school friend Ruth asks Miss Marple to go visit Ruth's sister Carol Anne. Also wealthy and currently married to a man determined to find a cure for criminal behavior in young men, Carol Anne has always been rather dreamy and aloof, yet she is surrounded by people who adore her. At any time there is her housekeeper, granddaughter, two step sons and various troubled young men hanging about the house, all trying to make Carol Anne comfortable and happy, even when Carol Anne's former step son, staying over just one night, winds up dead. I place this one right in the middle of the pack of Christies. Unusual plot, yet with that beautiful yet callous young woman who seems to worm her way through so many Christies.
    • 4/5
      An old school friend asks Miss Marple to visit her sister, about whom she's quite worried. When Miss Marple arrives at Stonygates, a country house with a young offenders institution attached, she is thrown into the complicated relationships of an extended family, and it isn't long before a murder is committed. Luckily, Miss Marple is at hand to prevent a possible miscarriage of justice from being carried out.I agree with one or two other reviewers that the solution was quite easy to spot, especially if one is familiar with the way Agatha Christie's mind works. It is true that she does quite well to throw in false clues and red herrings so that I wavered in my resolution more than once. Not all of the plot line is convincing, but as ever Ms Christie's novels and stories prove a diverting read that exercises those *little grey cells*.
    • 3/5
      While I enjoyed this entry in the Miss Marple series, it was just "good" not great as some of Christie's are. Given Miss Marple's oft pronounced maxim of never believe anything anyone says without confirmation, she seemed to take Lewis Serrocold's statements at face value for far too long.
    • 3/5
      When Miss Marple's old school friend, Ruth, asks Miss Marple to check in on Ruth's sister, Carrie Louise, at her estate, Miss Marple is only too happy to comply. Upon arrival at Stonygates, Miss Marple must agree with Ruth that something odd is in the air at the estate beyond the strangeness that results from it also being home to an institute for delinquent boys and young men. When one of Carrie Louise's relatives is murdered, it becomes even clearer that something is afoot at Stonygates and it is up to Miss Marple to figure it out.Agatha Christie is always a reliably solid read and this entry in the Miss Marple series is no exception. However, I have to admit that it didn't knock my socks off quite the same way as the prior Miss Marple. I think some of the reason that I was underwhelmed was that I figured out who did it relatively early on and thus was deprived of the usual surprise. Nonetheless, an enjoyable read.
    • 5/5
      Nice, neat little Miss Marple mystery. Miss Marple is asked by an old friend from her school days to check up on the friend's sister, who is now a remarried widow, living at her estate. Her second husband has turned the estate into an institution for the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents. But, something odd and sinister seems to lurk, not in the dormitories, but in the manor house itself. When a trustee of the institution is murdered while staying in the house, Miss Marple's detective skills come into play to catch the murderer before he or she strikes again.
    • 4/5
      This is one of Christie's shorter novels at just over 200 pages, but it's tauter than some, and the setting is slightly more unusual - a reform home for young criminals. This is the first Miss Marple novel I have read, and she played a less prominent role than Poirot does, advising on the sidelines but not taking part in the setpiece interview scenes with the cast of suspects as does the Belgian. She is dismissed as a slightly dotty old lady by some of the younger characters, who think she can never have been young ("To youth it seems very odd to think that age was once young and pigtailed and struggled with decimals and English literature."), but naturally she later gains the respect of all. The ending was quite dramatic and unexpected (to me, anyway). One minor point that has struck me in this and a couple of her other novels is the characters in each of them who are dismissive of Italian people in general as liars who are prone to violence, which is a bit odd.
    • 4/5
      A family running a psychiatric "Reform College" for juvenile offenders is thrown into a tizzy when a visiting trustee is murdered in his room, the head of the family & reform college is "attacked" by one of his "patients" behind closed doors with the family listening, and the matriarch is seemingly being poisoned.

      Two more murders take place; one of the stepsons & a youthful offender who both seem to know something they shouldn't...

      Before any of this happens Miss Marple is sent down by Ruth van Rydock (an former school chum) to make sure that their mutual former school chum, Carrie Louise (Matriarch) is safe... When Ruth last stayed w/ Carrie Louise there had been a sense of impending trouble brewing.

      The family was a definitely odd group of people, being mostly adopted: with the natural daughter being a sour, jealous woman; the Italian dramatic granddaughter being from an adopted mother (whose grandmother was a convicted murderess) & her unhappy husband (a simple man from the mid-west u.s.); an older stepson by Carrie Louise's first marriage; two other stepsons from a second marriage both in love w/ the granddaughter and wanting to marry her; and the newly arrived out-of-place ranting young man suffering from persecution & delusional syndrome.

      I liked the mystery and the story (a twist on the locked door conundrum), but I didn't take too much to the characters, so I knocked this down a star.

    • 2/5
      Jane Marple’s childhood friend and schoolmate, Ruth, expresses her concern about her sister, Carrie Louise, and asks Miss Marple to go for a visit and try to find out what is happening. Carrie Louise has always been rather idealistic and she hasn’t had much luck with her marriages, though she has been left with considerable wealth and a large country estate. Miss Marple arrives to find that Carrie Louise’s current husband has helped her turn the estate into a home for delinquent boys, with a large staff of doctors, therapists and teachers. Her daughter, granddaughter and two stepsons are also currently at the estate. Her former brother-in-law, Christian Gulbrandsen, who is a director of the trust that funds the estate, arrives unexpectedly to confer with her husband, Lewis Serrocold. Before they can meet with the other directors, however, Gulbrandsen is murdered and someone has tried to poison Carrie Louise. Just what is going on?

      I love Agatha Christie and have enjoyed other Miss Marple mysteries, but this one misses the mark. It is far too convoluted, and yet very slow going despite everything that is happening. There is the central murder; the evidence of poisoning; a clearly unhinged paranoid patient who apparently is trusted enough to be Lewis Serrocold’s assistant; a possible love triangle between Carrie Louise’s granddaughter, her angry American husband, and at least one (if not both) of Carrie’s stepsons; and a juvenile delinquent who is a master lock picker and claims to have witnessed something important on one of his nocturnal jaunts away from the dormitory.

      Christie has proved that she is more than capable of juggling many storylines to build suspense and thwart the reader’s efforts to figure out the solution before the author chooses to reveal it. But rather than tight plotting with twists and turns, this novel’s storyline seemed to just meander without purpose (other than to fill pages). The final reveal was done in the form of a letter, neatly tying up all loose ends in a couple of paragraphs rather than giving us the confrontation and reveal in real time. I had been bored for much of the book and was glad it was over, but I felt that I hadn’t read a Christie novel at all, but something written by a less-skilled author to imitate the Queen of Crime.
    • 3/5
      I listened to this, so once or twice when it seemed to me that things had got out of sync, it might have been me and not being able to flick back, rather than Agatha Christie actually getting it wrong. At more than one point, I felt sure that at least a day had gone by, but maybe that was me. It's possible I have either read this before or seen it on the TV, but I got the murderer correct. Right at the point the Police appear and Miss Marple says "I think they call it misdirection"; at that point I knew who, but not exactly the how of it. It's set in a large house, part of which is used by the philanthropic owners as an institute for reforming young criminals, there's a complex and somewhat unhealthy family dynamic, with a number of possible suspects for the crime. That, when coupled with a suspected poisoning, causes a long list of suspects. And the list seems to get longer, not shorter, as the murder progresses. As is usual the obvious suspect is not, the truth lies somewhere else and there's a certain amount of water muddying that goes on before it all gets sorted out. The end is slightly unexpected and mildly unsatisfactory, I do prefer the law to get their man.
    • 3/5
      Miss Marple is asked to look into trouble at a home for juvenile delinquents, which also involves a wealthy family.
    • 3/5
      Alright. She's done much better. None of the characters stand out which is unusual and (what I think goes hand in hand with that) there's no trace of the humour I've come to love in Christie's books. I knew who the murderer was as soon as the murder was committed and that never bothers me but since the characters are so bland there was nothing much left to enjoy. Still very readable but infinitely forgettable too.
    • 4/5
      This was so very nearly a perfect score. But I found the fate of the criminal and his accomplice too much of an anticlimax. Having said that, this book was an absolute pleasure to read. The characters are memorable. Miss Jane Marple appears in it a lot. We know something new about her youth, but it's not much to go with. Carrie Louise and Ruth could have been temporary props that weren't significant in Miss Marple's past.There was a certain fluidity in the narrative that I didn't find in Marple stories till now. The best example of that were when Jane Marple was being introduced to the rambling household of Carrie Louise, and also during the interrogation scenes by Inspector Curry. The interviews were far from rambling themselves. It's curious how Inspector Curry at one instant has respect for Miss Marple, but when she has solved the case, and was beginning her explanations, he immediately thought she was batty. That was the one jarring inexplicable fact of the book.The character Gina is the one who gives out the usual, obligatory, and much awaited speech about life. Immediately after the speech, she is given a forceful kiss by Alex. The author makes Alex pay dearly by making him the one who realizes the truth about the murder, how the trick was accomplished. Alex I think, died needlessly. His death is barely given the decorum of the limelight. His needless death is glossed over. Nobody really says how or when was he killed.I was dreading the title of this book; 'They Do It With Mirrors'. There's an Hercule Poirot story that has a similar title and I feared this plot was to be a rehash. Good news; there's no actual mirror in the solution of the case. This book was a joy to read. I'm looking forward to the rest of the Marple stories with impatience.
    • 5/5
      Could hardly fault this - straightforward good crime novel, with dollops of rather brilliantly observed character. I'd forgotten how spot-on AC could be. Of course it's all done, well, with mirrors, and smoke, and the denouement is the sort of huge surprise that's so surprising you should have guessed who, if not why; but crisply done. A Miss Marple story, btw.
    • 3/5
      He purely loves Agatha Christie, personally she's okay, but... Miss Marple though - I do like the way that lady thinks.