Dear listeners,

Today, we're going deep on a single, very important book. This book:

The Murder at the Vicarage, Miss Marple's first novel-length case, from 1930. The occasion? Simply that I realised that it had been a long time, too long, since I had encountered Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, as opposed to the many, many adaptations and reincarnations of her that have appeared since. We read this book in the Shedunnit Book Club back in April and it quite took me by surprise. I had forgotten how much of the original character gets lost when it is reinterpreted by other people and in other formats. It was time, I decided, to rediscover Miss Marple. I wanted, as far as possible, to read this book in the same way that someone arriving to it fresh in 1930 might have done.

And so, that's what you can hear in today's new episode — my reflections on properly rereading this book for the first time in a long time, and all that it has to tell us about what this character was to go on to become.

Of course, The Murder at the Vicarage was not the first time Christie committed Jane Marple, spinster detective, to the page. Her very first appearance was in a short story titled "The Tuesday Night Club", published in The Royal Magazine in December 1927. This was part of a set of six stories serialised in that publication, running monthly from December 1927 until May 1928. Six more monthly Miss Marple stories followed in the Story-Teller Magazine, the following year, beginning with "The Blue Geranium" in the December 1929 issue. Another, a one-off, came out in Nash's Pall Mall Magazine in November 1931. Those thirteen short stories were then collected in an anthology titled either The Tuesday Night Club or The Thirteen Problems, depending on where and when you were buying it, which came out in the UK in 1932 and in the US in 1933.

But unless you happened to catch one or all of these magazines at the time, for a reader in 1930 The Murder at the Vicarage could well have been your first meeting with Miss Marple. What might that have been like?

The initial reviews of The Murder at the Vicarage offer some clues. Harold Nicolson in the Daily Express said: "I have read better works by Agatha Christie, but that does not mean that this last book is not more cheerful, more amusing, and more seductive than the generality of detective novels." The New York Times was distinctly irritated by Miss Marple and "the local sisterhood of spinsters that is introduced with much gossip and click-clack". The reviewer continued: "A bit of this goes a long way and the average reader is apt to grow weary of it all, particularly of the amiable Miss Marple, who is sleuth-in-chief of the affair." I find the take in the Times Literary Supplement most telling. That reviewer noted that "It is Miss Marple who does detect the murderer in the end, but one suspects she would have done it sooner in reality."

This speaks to something that truly surprised me upon this return to The Murder at the Vicarage. Miss Marple simply isn't in it very much! The novel is narrated in the first person by the vicar of St Mary Mead, Leonard Clement. Because the murder is discovered to have taken place in his house, and because of his institutional status in the village, he is given a lot of access to the investigation — he is present when suspects are interviewed and the scene is examined, and so on. Miss Marple, meanwhile, pops in for tea occasionally or leans over her garden wall to make her contribution. It is not until the climactic sequence that we see her take anything approaching action, and even then this is all filtered through Clement's point of view. As that TLS reviewer hinted, it does at times feel a little like we've travelled a needlessly long way to arrive at the obvious conclusion, which is that Miss Marple was right all along.

Agatha Christie had her doubts, too. Writing decades later in her autobiography, she said: "Reading Murder at the Vicarage now, I am not so pleased with it as I was at the time. It has, I think, far too many characters, and too many sub-plots. But at any rate the main plot is sound." I agree with her, but I still think the novel is wonderfully good. It contains so much and yet the prose never feels heavy nor is the reader feel over-burdened with information. The 1930s was to see the publication of some of Christie's best work — Murder on the Orient Express, The A.B.C. Murders, Death on the Nile and And Then There Were None all appeared in the next nine years — and I think you can see her trying out ideas in The Murder at the Vicarage that would later come to fruition.

I hope you enjoy reconsidering this book with me. Although I was surprised by some aspects of it, I am more sure than ever that it is a brilliant piece of writing.

Until next time,

Caroline

You can listen to every episode of Shedunnit at shedunnitshow.com or on all major podcast apps. Selected episodes are available on BBC Sounds. There are also transcripts of all episodes on the website. The podcast is now newsletter-only — we're not updating social media — so if you'd like to spread the word about the show consider forwarding this email to a mystery-loving friend with the addition of a personal recommendation. Links to Blackwell’s are affiliate links, meaning that the podcast receives a small commission when you purchase a book there (the price remains the same for you).

Dear listeners,

We're approaching the middle of August, which where I am in the world is peak summer — the days are still long, the school holidays are still going, and the weather is warm. So for today's trip into the Shedunnit archives, I thought we would look at episodes that have explored how mystery writers use summer in their books.

The "Murder in a Heatwave" episode from 2023 seems like a good place to start. Here's what guest Cecily Gayford had to say about the narrative potential of a rising temperature:

"I think there's a kind of narrative heightening that happens in heat waves. They intensify things and in literary novels that often is used as a device to bring the narrative to a fever pitch. But I think in crime fiction, it's often used as a way to suggest that someone's gonna really lose it. And that makes sense to us because everyone's had that experience of thinking, I'm so hot, something has to give. I cannot bear my family anymore. I cannot bear this tube carriage. I think the boiling over metaphor is a good one, right? You're kind of heating what might have otherwise been a stable situation until something dramatic happens. And then at the end there's going to be a thunderstorm and everything will be resolved."

It was also interesting to look back on the "Murder on Holiday" episode, in which I reflected on some of the reasons why summer holiday travel is a frequent inclusion in golden age murder mysteries:

"One theory about why detective fiction was so popular between the two world wars has to do with the general exhaustion and ennui caused by global events. I’ve talked about this on previous episodes — the idea put forward by the scholar Alison Light is that whodunnits are a kind of 'convalescent literature', ideal for reading while recovering from trauma. Since travel, often to a place with good air like a seaside or mountain resort, was a regular prescription by late nineteenth century doctors, it follows that mysteries set in these places would fit in well with this idea of crime fiction as a tool for recovery and escape.

One book that came up in that episode that I hadn't thought about in this context in a while is The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey:

As I said in the episode, this book is a good example of the "convalescent" type of holiday mystery. In it, Tey's sleuth Inspector Alan Grant takes a sleeper train to Scotland to recuperate after a breakdown.

"Although it was published long after the actual golden age years — it came out in 1952 — Tey’s crime writing remained fairly steeped in the prevalent traditions of the 1920s and 30s. Grant is planning a relaxing break staying with friends and fishing, but when he gets off the train at his destination, one of the other passengers is found to be dead. Even then, Grant resists the temptation to jump straight back into work and continues with his plans, only to find that he’s picked up the dead man’s newspaper and there are some cryptic clues written on it. From that point on, the detective can’t leave the case alone, even though he’s not officially engaged on it. Tey’s novel is as much a meditation on the isolating effects of illness as it is a whodunnit, and Grant’s travels around the Highlands are key to unravelling both strands of the book."

Another common setting for a summer holiday mystery is the hotel. I've actually had cause to think about this particular trope quite a lot recently, because (only partly on purpose) the Shedunnit Book Club has ended up reading two books back to back that are set in hotels: The Feast by Margaret Kennedy last month and then The Cellars of the Majestic by Georges Simenon this month.

Here's what I had to say about hotel holiday mysteries back in 2023:

"Hotels and resorts are an excellent way of defining the limits of a story, meaning that a detective can get to know all the possible suspects in a social setting. Plenty of books work on this basis — Agatha Christie’s A Caribbean Mystery and At Bertram’s Hotel, for instance, or Dorothy L. Sayers’ Have His Carcase, in which Harriet Vane stays at the excellently named Hotel Resplendent in a small English seaside town after finding a body on the coast nearby. Death in Clairvoyance by Josephine Bell has a neat twist on this, with the murder taking place at a masked ball at a seaside hotel. Bell’s regular detective David Wintringham and his wife are on holiday and decide to attend the party, at which one of six identiacaly costumed clowns is killed. The ball essentially makes a circle within a closed circle, creating even more of a challenge for the sleuth."

Have His Carcase is a book that I don't instantly reach for when I want a summer holiday mystery, but I should — it certainly fits the bill.

Although this cover doesn't exactly scream "glamorous seaside holiday", there are plenty of details about the hotel where Harriet Vane stays while working on this impossible beach crime case.

A few other episodes you might like to revisit to keep the summer cheer going a little longer: Cricket and Crime, Death Under Par, All at Sea and Death Sets Sail On The Nile.

Happy holidaying, happy summering, happy reading and happy listening to you all.

Until next time,

Caroline

You can listen to every episode of Shedunnit at shedunnitshow.com or on all major podcast apps. Selected episodes are available on BBC Sounds. There are also transcripts of all episodes on the website. The podcast is now newsletter-only — we're not updating social media — so if you'd like to spread the word about the show consider forwarding this email to a mystery-loving friend with the addition of a personal recommendation. Links to Blackwell’s are affiliate links, meaning that the podcast receives a small commission when you purchase a book there (the price remains the same for you).

Dear listener,

For today's episode, I am looking at a setting that I suspect is very familiar to all of us avid readers: the bookshop.

A couple of months ago, I was reading Death of Mr Dodsley as part of my preparation for the Green Penguin Book Club episode about The Man in the Dark by John Ferguson. There were lots of things I liked about Mr Dodsley — the opening in the House of Commons, the character of private detective Francis McNab, his interactions with the police detectives — but above all what impressed me was how well Ferguson had integrated the bookshop setting into his murder plot. It wasn't an accident that this bookshop on the Charing Cross Road in London had ended up playing host to a corpse: the selling of books is integral both to the murderer's actions and the detective's methods in discovering them.

This book prompted me to wonder: are there many other golden age era murder mysteries that take advantage of a bookshop setting in this way? And so, today's episode came to be — an investigation of Murder at the Bookshop.

Since in the episode I focused less on the individual books and more on the thematic correspondences between them, I thought that here I would offer you a brief introduction to each title I talked about so you can see if you would like to add any of them to your reading list.

Beginning With A Bash by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

This 1937 novel is part of the American golden age, which was comprised of work by US-based writers who chose to follow the puzzle-based fair play conventions popular in the UK during the interwar years rather than the hardboiled noir tradition then popular in their own country. Phoebe Atwood Taylor was a prolific crime writer from Boston, best known for her detective Asey Mayo, who was nicknamed the "Codfish Sherlock" because so many of his adventures take place in and around Cape Cod. I sampled one of these for myself for the Agatha Christie's Taste in Crime Fiction episode earlier this year.

Beginning with a Bash appeared under her Alice Tilton pseudonym and was the first in a series about a schoolteacher-turned-detective named Leonidas Witherall. At the start of this book, Witherall (who we are repeatedly told looks exactly like the well-known portrait of Shakespeare) is working as a janitor for a secondhand bookshop in Boston. The shop has recently been inherited by one Dot Peters, and on a particularly cold Saturday afternoon in the depths of winter, a former student of Witherall's named Martin Jones is chased into the shop by the police, wrongly accused of a theft. Then the body of a customer, a professor, is found among the untidy stacks, and Jones is arrested for the murder. Leonidas, Dot, and a Boston society matron called Agatha Jordan who also happened to be in the shop at the time of the crime decide to find the real culprit before Jones can be charged on the Monday morning. The ensuing hijinks see them discover a secret passage, get drawn into some gang warfare, and experience multiple car chases and shootouts. This is not an especially serious book, but there are sufficient puzzle elements to please the golden age fan who enjoys a lighter sort of adventure. I suspect fans of Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence books might like this one.

Murder in the Bookshop by Carolyn Wells

Another American title, this time set in New York and published in 1936. Carolyn Wells was an exceptionally prolific author, publishing over 170 books in her lifetime. This was the 46th of the 62 books she wrote featuring private detective Fleming Stone. She really belonged to an earlier era of crime writing — she lived from 1862 to 1942 and cited Anna Katharine Green as a major influence. The puzzle elements of this tale about an obsessive and wealthy book collector murdered in the act of acquiring a valuable book signed by Founding Father Button Gwinnett are a bit sketchy, but it can still be enjoyed as a superficial romp.

Death in a Bookstore by Augusto De Angelis

Meanwhile, I was very glad to have started this project so that I ended up reading this book, first published in Italy in 1936. Augusto De Angelis was an Italian journalist who wrote 20 crime novels starring Commissario Carlo De Vincenzi of the Milan police. According to De Angelis's grandson, who wrote the introduction to the Kazabo edition, he has a claim to have created the first truly "Italian" detective (as opposed to previous characters who were clearly transplanted pastiches of pre-existing sleuths such as Sherlock Holmes). De Angelis was also a staunch anti-fascist who was murdered by Mussolini supporters in 1944.

Originally titled Sei donne e un libro (Six Women and a Book), this mystery follows Inspector De Vincenzi as he investigates the murder of a prominent Milanese surgeon and politician, who has been found dead in the backroom of a rather down at heel secondhand bookshop. The case takes him into the world of illicit book dealing and spiritualism societies, which was an interesting callback to an old episode, Knock Knock, about seances in mysteries. Above all, what impressed me about this book was the depth of De Vincenzi's character: he is a quiet, philosophical man who takes beliefs different to his own seriously. Above all, he just wants to escape Milan to the countryside so he can see the stars and think about the meaning of life. I'm so pleased to have discovered him and look forward to reading more of De Angelis's work.

Bodies in a Bookshop by R.T. Campbell

This book by the poet Ruthven Todd from 1946 probably dies with Death of Mr Dodsley as the best-plotted mystery I read for this episode. Todd was advised by his poet friend Cecil Day Lewis (aka Nicholas Blake) to write detective fiction as a means of supplementing his income, but to do it under a pseudonym so as not to sully his poetic reputation. Todd produced eight novels featuring a botanist-detective, Professor John Stubbs, in a very short space of time (under two years, I believe), but discontinued the enterprise when his publisher went bankrupt. This is the first of them that I have read and I enjoyed it very much until about four-fifths of the way through, when I began to feel rather let down by the solution.

Bodies in a Bookshop is narrated in the first person by Stubb's assistant and "Watson" figure, Max Boyle. One of the things I liked best about this book was Boyle's antipathy for his boss; no fawning adulation to be found here. Soon after discovering two bodies in a bookshop, Boyle says:

"If I wasn’t careful I would be hauled in as his Watson once again; I have no liking for playing Watson to the old man’s Sherlock. I haven’t the right kind of mind. I am not suitably astonished when he produces the solution like the rabbit from the conjuror’s topper. Much as I admire the Professor I have to confess that he irritates me almost beyond endurance."

Their bickering dynamic was great fun to read, complemented by the serene presence of a Scotland Yard inspector who thinks they are both ridiculous. There is also some decent critique of the detective fiction form in this book, with Stubbs being called out on his supposedly empirical method of detection, which really just involves accusing everyone in turn of the crime until he hits upon the right solution. Ending notwithstanding, this was another book I was glad to have thrown into my path and I hope to try more of the R.T. Campbell output in future. I'm intrigued by his debut, Unholy Dying, which is apparently set in Edinburgh at a conference of geneticists.

I hope you find something there to investigate further! I look forward to hearing about your bookshop mystery reading at a future date.

Until next time,

Caroline

You can listen to every episode of Shedunnit at shedunnitshow.com or on all major podcast apps. Selected episodes are available on BBC Sounds. There are also transcripts of all episodes on the website. The podcast is now newsletter-only — we're not updating social media — so if you'd like to spread the word about the show consider forwarding this email to a mystery-loving friend with the addition of a personal recommendation. Links to Blackwell’s are affiliate links, meaning that the podcast receives a small commission when you purchase a book there (the price remains the same for you).