A review by zakcebulski
The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie

dark emotional mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75


The queen is fucking back.
It has been a long time since I read anything by who I have come to see as one of my favorite authors.
I am so glad to be back in the world of Christie.
I have read most of Christie's best known works, and now I am delving more in to what would be her lesser known works.
I have a stack of Christie's works- I usually find them for $3 or so whenever I go to a used book store by my house- and I will grab one or two, so I have a back catalog.

I picked up this book more out of interest for the subject matter- a body is found murdered in the library of a wealthy person under mysterious circumstances.
The set up for this book is so simple, but so immediately fascinating and that is what I can praise about this book immediately- it grabs hold of you and takes you on a damn ride.

Now, this is my first Christie book featuring Miss Jane Marple, and I have to say that I absolutely loved her in this role. I have read so many stories where Poirot is the main detective it was very nice to have a change of pace and character. That being said, I did feel like Miss Marple was sort of a stand in for Poirot. I would have loved a little bit more separation from Poirot.
I thought that the rest of the characters were well done and had a nice personality diversity to them. What I can praise Christie for is that she is exquisite at writing characters who have different motivations for why they would commit this crime.
This book is so choc full of red herrings you would be a satiated pescatarian.
But, she writes them in such a way where I never once felt that they were forcibly inserted. Rather, they were just people who had a red herring air to them and it is up to the reader to figure out what the fuck is going on.

I adore how Christie puts everything out there for the readers to solve while the story is being told. That is something that I think resonates so much with me is that her stories are solvable as you are reading them, whereas so many other mystery authors have a twist, or a character come out of fucking nowhere or was introduced in the last 11 pages be the culprit, Christie doesn't. She gives you all of the pieces and, if you are savvy enough, you can solve it!
I am not savvy enough but I still have a great time reading through the tales that she spins.
I did get to the end of this book and actually did sort of guess as to what was going to happen, but, damn, it was still a good reveal.
The end sees that the murdered girl and another girl were murdered and their bodies were modified so as to appear as each other in order for a pair to get the inheritance. I love that this whole story is set up to not make sense, but, in the way it unfolds it seems that the sheer absurdity of this story is one in which the absurdity seems to be the only answer. 
But, Miss Marple says balderdash to that, and solves the mystery by a steady stream of breadcrumbs laid out. I love that Miss Marple was written to be an actually useful small town busybody, because she is fucking great and I am so excited to go and read more stories where she is the detective! 

If you have not read any Agatha Christie please for the love of literature, go and read some of her books, you will not be disappointed. They are endlessly fascinating and the fact that so many stories, so many mysteries can come out of one mind shows that not all creative minds are created equal! 


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