Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Body in the Library
    Unavailable
    The Body in the Library
    Unavailable
    The Body in the Library
    Audiobook5 hours

    The Body in the Library

    Written by Agatha Christie

    Narrated by Stephanie Cole

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    A young woman found murdered A scandal in the making

    When Mrs Bantry wakes to find a body in her library, there’s only one woman to call: her good friend Jane Marple.

    But she hasn’t called her old friend for comfort.

    The body in her library has been murdered and Miss Marple is so very good at solving murders.

    Her investigations uncover a scandal far darker than either of them could have imagined, and this time she may be out of her depth.

    Never underestimate Miss Marple

    ‘Christie always defied expectations, not only in her legendary twists and reveals, but also in the underestimated detectives she created as her heroes. The villains never see these sleuths coming – and that’s half the fun.’
    Leigh Bardugo

    ‘One of the most ingeniously contrived of all her murder stories.’
    Birmingham Post

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 12, 2006
    ISBN9780007249268
    Unavailable
    The Body in the Library
    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.

    More audiobooks from Agatha Christie

    Related to The Body in the Library

    Crime Thriller For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Death On The Nile

      Jan 8, 2021

      Death On The Nile
      1 min read

    • Article

      Cracking The Case

      Mar 25, 2020

      Cracking The Case
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Buzz In THE DARK

      Sep 16, 2020

      “When I say there was a lot going on in the master bedroom at Dear Towers one night recently, please don’t get the wrong impression. For a start, Mr D was snoring for most of the time. Perhaps that’s not fair. Mr Dear doesn’t snore as most people wo

      3 min read

    • Article

      Crossed Wires

      Feb 23, 2024

      Crossed Wires
      5 min read

    • Article

      ‘Death? I Can’t Wait For The Adventure!’ Most Haunted’s Yvette Fielding On Ghosts, Sceptics And The Afterlife

      Oct 4, 2022

      The First Lady of the Paranormal, also known as the Queen of the Night, is waiting for me at Crewe railway station in a bright red vintage Mini. I just about fold myself into the front seat. She cackles, performs a miraculous U-turn and puts her foot

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Weirdest Ghosts Of All?

      Feb 25, 2021

      The Weirdest Ghosts Of All?
      4 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Sep 1, 2022

      First prize 10 and under Tang Li, age 9 Palmetto Bay, FL My name is Anisa. I was in Hawaii on vacation. I enjoyed sipping refreshing drinks, overlooking the turquoise ocean, and dancing with others, before I overheard that the priceless Fire Ring wa

      10 min read

    • Article

      STEPPING Out

      Mar 4, 2020

      STEPPING Out
      9 min read

    • Article

      AUNT MAUD’S SECRET Part 1

      Sep 1, 2021

      “WHAT! SERIOUSLY?” “Settle down, Martin,” said Ms. Phelps as she poured herself a second mug of coffee that morning. She sat down at the kitchen table, gently blowing on the steam. “Aunt Maud is so excited about her visit and really looking forward

      6 min read

    • Article

      Noises In The NIGHT

      Aug 18, 2021

      Noises In The NIGHT
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Shadow In The Hallway

      Nov 16, 2022

      The Shadow In The Hallway
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Scarlet PEBBLE

      Feb 28, 2024

      The Scarlet PEBBLE
      9 min read

    • Article

      Take a Writer Like Him: My Complicated Love Affair with Kingsley Amis

      Aug 24, 2018

      1. As much as I may rack my brain, there are 15 minutes or so in the dark that I can’t account for and that I’ll never get back—15 minutes during which, I have to think, that creep’s hands were touching my body. It’s a weird thing to think about all

      12 min read

    • Article

      It Happened To Me…

      Jan 26, 2023

      It Happened To Me…
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Hampstead MYSTERY

      Oct 19, 2022

      A Hampstead MYSTERY
      9 min read

    • Article

      Supportive Husband

      Sep 12, 2023

      There were less intimate places available, so it was odd when a woman took the seat directly facing mine across the subway aisle. I looked up from my book and right back down: a couple of months before, we’d gone home together. She had a Southern acc

      22 min read

    • Article

      J. Jezewska Stevens

      Dec 15, 2017

      The party was a failure. I can’t even tell you what a failure it was. There are no words. Only a great pain in my chest when I wake up. On the veranda. It’s better when I sit in the chair. Oh, but then I can see around. The gauzy curtains, pushed by

      15 min read

    • Article

      DON’T GO INTO The Cellar!

      Jan 21, 2020

      DON’T GO INTO The Cellar!
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Joke

      Sep 1, 2020

      Although best known for his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury was also a prolific writer of short stories, having published his first while still a teenager. This previously unpublished story likely dates to 1950, the year The Martian Chronicle

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Grand Canal, Venice, 1970

      Mar 1, 2024

      The Grand Canal, Venice, 1970
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Hampstead MYSTERY

      Oct 26, 2022

      A Hampstead MYSTERY
      9 min read

    • Article

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time

      Dec 1, 2023

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time
      9 min read

    • Article

      A WING AND a prayer

      Sep 28, 2021

      A raven saved my life Cate McMurray, 47, from West Midlands I ’d always known I was different. As a small child, I used to see and hear people who weren’t there. One day, I was playing hide ‘n’ seek with my two sisters, and tucked myself away in a cu

      4 min read

    • Article

      Haunted House Whodunnit

      Sep 20, 2023

      Haunted House Whodunnit
      2 min read

    • Article

      POISON ON Pink Paper

      Jan 2, 2020

      POISON ON Pink Paper
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Body in the Library

    3.5/5

    1,478 ratings93 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen is an enchanting little book. It is the story of two sisters, Claire and Sydney Waverly, who have been estranged for many years. Claire is living in the family home in Bascom, North Carolina, when Sydney arrives with her daughter Bay in tow. Sydney is running from Bay’s abusive father and has nowhere else to go. Claire, a caterer, has trouble getting close to people for fear they will leave.The Waverly’s have a reputation around town for being different. They possess special gifts. Bay has an uncanny ability to know where things belong, from forks to people. Evanelle, an elderly cousin, is compelled to give people things that they will need in the future; things that will alter the course of their lives (although she never knows how they will be used when she gives them). Claire’s gift is her very special culinary skills. She uses edible flowers and herbs from her garden in her cooking, which can make people remember or forget, fall in or out of love, and any number of other mystical things as she sees fit. Sydney is determined NOT to be special as only a Waverly can be, but soon it’s clear that she is gifted as well. And then there’s the Waverly apple tree, which has it’s own brand of magic.I was captivated by Garden Spells. It is romantic and sweet and the story flows nicely. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys fantasy or magical fiction. Is magical fiction an actual genre? If not, it should be.
    • 5/5
      read this out loud to Lisa when we were in Jerusalem. One of my favorite Agatha Christie mysteries.
    • 4/5
      Vintage Christie--ranked against her own competition of jaw-dropping books, such as And Then There Were None, this is a tad less memorable, but it still kept me guessing to the end while playing fair with the reader. Otherwise it's more than solid and has all the hallmarks of her best. There is the picture of life in a small English village in the mid-20th Century, Lymstock, which has been suffering from a series of poison pen letters culminating in murder. There's all the clues that come together in the end like clockwork, the red herrings, the plausible suspects, some of whom you favor, and others you come to care about you so hope didn't do it. There's humor, a nice element of romance, suspense--and oh, and Christie's elderly spinster detective Miss Marple. Although she mostly features at the end with the solution, not coming into the tale until Chapter Six of Eight, only a few dozen pages before the end. The story is the first person account of Jerry Burton, staying at the village with his sister while he recovers from an accident, and he's an appealing character through which to follow the tale.
    • 4/5
      This one was billed as a Miss Marple mystery, but she's only there for the last few chapters and we don't really get to see her detective powers until the final chapter. I felt slightly cheated by this because, while the POV character was great, it wasn't the book that I wanted when I sat down with it. I'm sure that if you're not specifically looking for a Marple book then this is a fun, satisfying mystery. I didn't guess who did it (I was way off base) and the brother and sister team at the heart of the book were fun to spend time with. Not one of Christie's strongest, but still a good read.
    • 4/5
      Pointing FingersAgatha Christie's swift, slim 1942 novel The Moving Finger is a Miss Marple mystery which very nearly does not have Miss Marple.In my version (the spiffy new Black Dog & Leventhal edition), the grandmotherly detective makes her first appearance on page 144 of the book's 201 pages. That's like Bruce Willis making his first appearance in a Bruce Willis movie twenty minutes before the end credits roll. Fifty-seven pages do not allow very much time for a detective to solve a case.However, even though she has what can best be described as an extended cameo role in The Moving Finger, Miss Jane Marple pulls it off in grand fashion, as always.The story is told through the eyes of Jerry Burton who has come to the little village of Lymstock with his younger sister Joanna after he's been injured in a wartime plane crash. His doctor has advised him to "lead the life of a vegetable" in a place where he can find peace and quiet.At first, Lymstock seems like the perfect haven. Sure, the residents are a little eccentric-&#151but who isn't when they live in Agatha Christie Land, right? From the first page of the novel, we're told that something is amiss and it centers around a series of anonymous letters which have been sent to several people living in the village.As Jerry tells us after he receives the first crude message, It seems odd, now, to remember that Joanna and I were more amused by the letter than anything else. We hadn't, then, the faintest inkling of what was to come&#151-the trail of blood and violence and suspicion and fear.That first letter accuses Jerry and Joanna of engaging in sexual activity most unbecoming of a brother and sister. Agatha never discloses the contents of the letters, but lets our imagination dance around the possibilities of what it says. I have a feeling that what we imagine is much more graphic than how readers in 1942 would have filled in the blanks. Whatever we guess the letters to say, the language would not have been suitable for World War Two era readers.During a visit to the local doctor, Jerry happens to mention the letter (which he impetuously burned in the fireplace). Dr. Griffith drops his bag and exclaims, "Do you mean to say that you've had one of them?"The epidemic of anonymous poison letters has been spreading around Lymstock for some time, Griffith tells Jerry, all of them "harping on the sex theme." The local solicitor Symmington was accused of illicit relations with his secretary ("Miss Ginch, who's forty at least, with pince-nez and teeth like a rabbit"), and even the doctor himself has received a letter which claims to have knowledge of him sleeping with some of his lady patients."What is this place?" Joanna wonders. "It looks the most innocent, sleepy harmless little bit of England you can imagine."That is Agatha's forte, of course-&#151ripping away the thin skin of gentility and good manners to reveal the gory, pestilential truth beneath. What reader hasn't known a two-faced, scheming liar who gets his or her jollies out of seeing innocent people suffer? Agatha knew how to craft a clever, often outlandish plot around an ordinary truth.Eventually, the venomous accusations become too much to bear and one character commits suicide-&#151ah, but was it really suicide? Perhaps there's something deeper, darker at work in Lymstock than just flooding the mail with wicked letters. Maybe there's more to it than just "sex and spite." Soon, paranoia is gripping the town: There was a half-scared, half-avid gleam in almost everybody's eye. Neighbor looked at neighbor.The police are called in as more bodies begin to pile up and while the investigators do their best to sort through the psychological patterns they find in the letters, it isn't until Miss Marple makes her late entrance in the novel that we know the village residents can breathe a sigh of relief. It won't be long before this "tame elderly maiden lady" will unmask the letter writer.Sandwiched chronologically between The Body in the Library and Murder in Retrospect, The Moving Finger is a fine addition to the Christie library. Agatha herself was partial to it, as she wrote in her Autobiography, "I find that another one I am really pleased with is The Moving Finger. It is a great test to reread what one has written some seventeen or eighteen years before. One's view changes. Some do not stand the test of time, others do."With its keen psychological probing of rumor and paranoia, this Christie mystery certainly stands the test of time.
    • 2/5
      Another Miss Marple story! I really do like her more than Poirot: much less egotistical -- though I'm basing on that on only having read one Poirot book, I suppose, so maybe I didn't get the whole of Poirot's character. I liked that this one wasn't in the style of a first person narrator's account, like the other two I've read. Ultimately I think I preferred that, because a lot of the charm of the first Miss Marple book came from the character of the vicar, but it was nice to have it a bit different, too.

      I didn't find the mystery very intriguing with this one, largely because I couldn't figure it out for myself. Possibly that was me being dim, and having a headache, etc, etc, but even when I got to the last few pages I wasn't perfectly sure whodunnit until it spelled it out.

      Still, it was pretty fun to read -- like a snack between meals.
    • 3/5
      A rather enjoyable mystery book. Christie keeps you guessing exactly what is going on in it, but when you come to the end of the book you come to the realization that it all falls into place rather nicely and if you had just looked at things from a slightly different angle you would have gotten there yourself. I rather found it pleasing to read and glad I finished it. I would recommend it to those that want to be able to dissect a mystery novel as this one seems rather ease for that purpose.
    • 2/5
      This one was a disappointment. The earliest Miss Marple stories don't seem as good as the later ones, except-till now- 'The Body In The Library', which is very complex. I knew this should be a Miss Marple mystery but she doesn't appear throughout most of the book. For another thing, the story takes place in the village of Lymstock, so I kept wondering how Marple was to be brought into the picture. For a few moments I had thought that there must have been a mistake as there wasn't enough scope for Miss Marple to appear and shine.Apart from that the denouement of the mystery itself is a disappointment. The old habit of setting up the spouse as the engineer of all the evil in the book-including the murders-is vintage Agatha Christie. But here the mystery is not as intriguing and not as impossible as her finer work. One of the lesser tricks employed in the story was to make the reader believe that the guilty must be a woman; an embittered woman who may or may not be a lady. But that didn't wash with me. There were not many false clues lying about, as the story was told from the perspective of Jerry Burton.Jerry Burton marries Megan Symmington. His sister Joanna marries Owen Griffth. I kept up with this book better whenever Megan was being described...what she wore, how she had a horse face...how childish her words were, how, when she cried, she rather bawled. She was crucial to my enjoyment of the book. To be honest the two way love between Jerry and Megan flares up rather suddenly. Near up to where Jerry falls for Megan, she was being described by Jerry as a sad dog who now was glad for having been taken for a walk! I haven't met someone like Megan in my life but I'm certain Dame Agatha Christie has. Any waning interest in her books rekindles because of some remarkable insight or description of hers. She must have met some of those people. She cannot have manufactured them out of thin air. That, I think, is impossible.
    • 3/5
      with all the adaptations going around, it's sometimes hard to remember if you've actually read the book or not

      This is a Miss Marple story, though she does turn up late and is hardly in the story at all.

      This is a story of Burton (and his sister) taking a house in the coutry after his flying accident. Soon they have received a poison pen letter accusing them of not being brother and sister, and not long after this people start dying. Burton has most of it worked out, even if he doesnt realise it, before Miss Marple arrives and ties everything up into a neat bow.

      Once again, a short neat little story and a quick read to while away an afternoon or two
    • 3/5
      This was only the third Miss Marple book (and the second novel) in the first twenty years of Christie’s career. As Poirot waned in the 1940s, Marple became her preferred investigator, fitting Christie’s slightly more sedate style, and her gradual feelings of disconnection from the modern world. My preferences lie with Hercule Poirot, but a good Marple novel can be very socially astute, and – with the contrast between Marple’s personality and the more direct methods of the younger police – can be very wryly written.

      "The Body in the Library" is an average Marple, and a slightly better-than-average Christie, buoyed a little by the moments that it plays with the detective story form. (The title comes from a fictional detective novel which Christie had referenced in an earlier work.) In spite of decades of the Golden Age detective tradition, Dame Agatha manages to make the idea of a body in a country house library somehow genuinely disquieting. The solution is interesting, in that it shies away from the usual revelations about citizens of a manor house, but it’s a bit hazy. As with many of the Marple books, it’s an enjoyable read, but isn’t one that will stay with you.

      Marple ranking: 8th out of 14
    • 3/5
      Miss Marple doesn't come in until the last third of the book, and even at that point, she's still a secondary character.

      The foreshadowing was interesting (but didn't help me "solve" the mystery)

      I had to skip to the back and see "whodunnit" before I could finish reading.
    • 3/5
      2.5** The fourth installment in the Miss Marple series has the reader visiting the small village of Lymstock. Jerry Burton has come to the quiet town along with his sister, to recuperate from a bad accident. But they are greeted with a vitriolic anonymous letter, and soon discover that someone has been sending such poison pen missives to most of the women in town. The local solicitor’s wife commits suicide after one such note … or does she?This is an intricately plotted mystery, but Miss Marple doesn’t appear until page 153 (out of 216 total pages). Most of the detective work is done by Jerry Burton and the local investigator, Superintendent Nash. They don’t lack for suspects; it seems that almost everyone in town is a potential culprit, including the vicar’s wife! But of course, after hearing a few casual remarks Miss Marple solves the entire case. There are a couple of romantic subplots which are really ridiculous and do nothing to further the mystery. I recognize that Christie frequently included such elements in her earlier works, but it just irritates me.
    • 5/5
      “Such a peaceful smiling happy countryside – and down underneath, something evil…”-- The Moving Finger, p. 28After a wartime plane crash, Jerry Burton’s doctor advises him to find a nice, quiet country village and “live the life of a vegetable” to speed along the recuperation process. Jerry and his sister Joanna settle in Lymstock, an idyllic country town that is three miles from a main road. It is a place where, as an astonished Joanna observes, “People really call – with cards!” Jerry’s peaceful, vegetative life in Lymstock is, however, soon shattered. A few days after their arrival, Jerry receives a malicious anonymous letter. The letter alleges that the Burtons are not brother and sister, but an unmarried couple living in sin. Jerry and Joanna are initially quite amused by the novelty of receiving such a letter, but they soon view the letter as a sign of something much more sinister.All of Lymstock, it seems, has been receiving these letters. When a woman apparently commits suicide after receiving a letter, the search for the writer intensifies. After another character is murdered, presumably by the anonymous writer, a palpable fear settles over the community. Neighbor suspects neighbor and the whole of Lymstock wonders who amongst them could be capable of such despicable acts.The indomitable Miss Marple makes her first appearance in the last quarter of the novel. For a less skillful writer than Dame Christie, the lack of the primary character could have made this story very tedious for the reader, but Christie’s characters are so well-drawn and compelling that the reader does not notice the loss. The primary sleuthing has been done by Jerry and a few of the other residents of Lymstock, but only Miss Marple is able to connect the myriad of clues and bring the killer to justice.The Moving Finger was originally published in the United States in 1942. For a novel that is over sixty years old, it has aged incredibly well. Agatha Christie’s extraordinary understanding of human nature gives her characters and her stories a timeless quality. One of my favorite Christie novels, The Moving Finger is a compelling read that will keep you guessing until the end.
    • 3/5
      Poison pen letters spread throughout an English village, upsetting recipients, and leading to a suicide. The village is full of quirky characters, any one of whom might be responsible for the anonymous missives. Ultimately the mystery will be solved by one of the villagers' acquaintances, none other than Miss Jane Marple. This was my first Miss Marple mystery, and I was surprised at how small a presence Miss Marple actually was in the story. She didn't appear until more than halfway through the book, and then remained in the background, sort of like the furniture. Yes, she does ultimately solve the mystery, but she's hardly a character of much consequence. It appears that The Moving Finger is one of the earlier Miss Marple mysteries, and perhaps the character was not yet well-developed. As this was my first Miss Marple I don't really have another novel for comparison. The story is told by an injured pilot, who has moved to the countryside to recover. As he meets the various villagers, especially the women, there's an added element of romance, but as with all of Christie's work, the mystery remains the heart of the book. This is not one of Christie's more remarkable works, but it is certainly solid, and kept me riveted to the end.
    • 3/5
      A very clever, simple solution that makes you look back on everything that's gone before and see it in a different light. Miss Marple's hardly in it, so it doesn't really feel like a Miss Marple book, but there's so much good stuff in it, you don't really mind. Mrs Dane Calthrop, the vicar's wife, is a wonderful character.
    • 4/5
      Miss Marple is a somewhat improbably detective, but since this is a highly unusual Christie, she's not actually doing much until about half way through the book. And then we get to see how wonderfully smart she really is as she manages to use her wonderful judge of human character to sort through this seemingly impossible mystery.
    • 3/5
      I can't for the life of me figure out how this title goes with the story, but the story was a pleasant read.
    • 4/5
      The Body in the Library — what a title to catch the eye of a bookworm! And especially the eye of a former library shelver bookworm like myself. Miss Marple stars in this Agatha Christie mystery that is complete with obnoxious policeman, devious witnesses, plenty of red herrings, and a brilliant finish. As in many of Christie's mysteries, the victim is never sentimentalized, and there are many people who would benefit from the victim's death. The work to discover the murderer is not a quest to avenge her, but a cool procedure of justice that must be done, even if the victim was a shallow, selfish gold digger. And yet there is a human element to the process as well; the body was found in Colonel Bantry's library, and if the murderer is never caught, suspicion will mark him out to be shunned in his circle of influence. His wife wisely sees that it will kill him in the end, which is why she enlists the help of her friend Miss Marple. If Miss Marple can't solve the mystery, no one can.Christie generally relies on well-established types to create her characters, and yet there is something compelling and memorable about them all the same. I liked the character of Conway Jefferson, though I'm not sure how his fatherly interest in Ruby Keene would be interpreted today. Christie's portrayal of Dinah Lee and her defiant attitude toward traditional morality is very insightful, and I love Miss Marple's compassion even toward people who are rude to her. The scene with the parents of Pamela Reeves is just heartbreaking. And that's something really very unexpected in a book like this, pigeonholed firmly in the murder-mystery genre. There's tragedy and humor mixed up together, and they don't negate one another. It's rather like real life, stylized as the art form of murder mysteries may be.I listened to this on audiobook read by Stephanie Cole, and it was excellent. Ms. Cole does a wonderful job with the characters' voices, especially that of Miss Marple. Cole perfectly captures the old maid's gentle, almost timid, but self-possessed and amused tone. Of course it's always so fun to have the case solved by the most unlikely, unimposing person imaginable. And prim little Miss Marple is a wonderful sleuth. Many times it's her womanly eye that catches the little details that the male policemen fail to notice. Poirot has long been a favorite detective of mine, but Miss Marple is definitely gaining on him!This story has less to do with libraries than the title implies, which was a bit of a disappointment to a library-lover like myself. But I certainly enjoyed it as a well-rounded, well-written mystery, and would recommend it (especially the audiobook version). If you haven't yet made Miss Marple's acquaintance and heard her theory of village parallels, The Body in the Library is a good place to start.
    • 3/5
      Not really a Miss Marple mystery. Marple doesn't appear until about 80% of the way through and then as a cameo role. She then appears at the end to wrap everything up. It was like she was added as an afterthought so it could be a "Miss Marple Mystery." Really, Christie could have inserted any of her sleuths and it wouldn't have made much difference.
    • 4/5
      Classic Ms. Marple -- what's not to love?
    • 4/5
      One of the cosier Christies --some are pretty grim but this is mild. A recuperating wounded airman and his sister come to a small village which is afflicted with a spate of nasty anonymous letters. The police believe they are written by a repressed respectable lady, but this turns out not to be the case. Miss Marple appears only briefly at the end to solve the case. One of the nicer features us a budding romance between te POV character (the wounded man) ad a troubled young woman.
    • 3/5
      A dead body is discovered in a library... Miss Marple helps the police discover who committed the murder. A good story with some unexpected twists.
    • 3/5
      The Body in the Library presents Miss Marple in a diminished role. Miss Marple appears in very few scenes and in these scenes she acts like the Greek chorus explaining the events. This older citizen presents her observations of human character to solve murders. Dolly Bantry, Jane Marple’s friend, discovers the body of a blonde, young woman in the library she immediately asks Mis Marple to come to the house. The police arrive, as does Jane Marple, to investigate the murder. Why is the woman in the Bantry’s house? And who is the woman? A co-worker identifies the body. Not long after this death, a woman is found in a burned car. Two women killed and are the deaths related. So begins the journey to determine what has happened and to catch the murderer. What motives are driving the killings? Greed, money, love, and jealousy. The journey to discovery thrills the mind and plays a little theme of Shakespeare’s mistaken identity.
    • 4/5
      The third Miss Marple book, The Body in the Library, begins with the Bantry's (first introduced in the short story, The Blue Geranium) waking up to find their household staff in disarray upon discovering a dead body in the library. A strangled body of a woman unknown to them. The police are called but seeing the difficulty involved in solving this sort of crime, Mrs Bantry takes matters into her own hands and calls their friend Jane Marple to help investigate. Similarly to The Murder at the Vicarage, Miss Marple plays a rather small part in the matter, with a lot of the chapters following the combined efforts of the various police officers and retired former Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir Henry Clithering. I'm rather a fan of the format with Miss Marple popping in and out with her insights. I really like all the cast of characters and the fluid viewpoints give a greater depth to them. The mystery was interesting, although I felt the final reveal about killing the young girl, Pamela and doing her up to look like Ruby so as to provide an alibi was a bit too convoluted and rather dramatic - even if it did work well to tie up the loose ends. Fun read, 3.5 stars, rounded to 4.
    • 3/5
      Well written but endibg is a bit far fetched
    • 4/5
      As this is my third Agatha Christie, and also the third detective/series I’ve sampled, I’ve come to the conclusion that my enjoyment of her work is not just a fluke as exemplified by my delight in Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None. Now I just need a Tommy & Tuppence book and I’ll have read one of each of her series and a stand alone. Though I’ve been greatly struggling with The Secret Adversary so we’ll have to see if I’m a fan of the T&T series as well.

      The Body in the Library follows a similar structure to Orient Express in that the crime is committed before the book even starts (as opposed to None) and the book is spent trying to solve the crime. Miss Marple is lovely and funny and charming, as are her friends who often enlist her help to solve crimes, as Mrs. Bantry does in The Body in the Library. As a character, despite not actually getting too much “page time,” readers get a sense of who she is and what she values.

      Christie’s plot and pacing are masterful as ever, the twists abound, and while you may think you’ve solved the mystery as quickly as Miss Marple, I promise you there is always still one more twist lurking in the shadows that you probably missed. I recommend The Body in the Library just as highly as Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None.
    • 4/5
      Even though I’ve read this before, I was unable to remember / work out who-done-it, & the answer was more fiendishly complicated than I had guessed. A body is found in the library of a friend’s house, and Miss Marple is co-opted by Dolly her gung-ho friend & the police to do some sleuthing.
    • 4/5
      I listened to this, as read by Stephanie Cole, this time around. I first came to Miss Marple in my early teens, so I have certainly read this before, and seen the TV adaptation, probably more than once. The thing about listening to a mystery when you already know whodunit is that you can see the way that the clues as the the actual solution are scattered through the book, and how they are missed in the first instance. the first time through, the clues are missed as you are following along with the detection, such that the solution is a surprise. the second time through you already know the end point, so can pay more attention to the journey.Miss Marple, as ever, manages to put her finger on the nub of the problem, even if she does need a little prompt from an unlikely source to the solution.
    • 3/5
      Always fun to read an Agatha Christie mystery! In this one, a young woman is found, dead, in the library of Colonel and Mrs. Bantry's estate. In trying to crack the case, the police begin to investigate around a dance-filled hotel, and Mrs. Bantry lets her old friend Miss Marple know about the goings-on.Definitely fun, and kept me guessing! I don't know if this was my absolute favorite of the Agatha Christies I've read, but it was an enjoyable and quick read.
    • 3/5
      Decent story and writing, but it's a bit old fashioned and straightforward for my taste.