The Murder at the Vicarage

3.5* Murder at the Vicarage von Agatha Christie ist das erste Miss Marple Buch. In St. Mary Mead, der Heimat von Miss Marple geschah ein Mord und es scheint so als hätten einige Personen ein Motiv. Die Geschichte ist nicht aus der Sicht von Miss Marple sondern aus der Sicht des Pfarrers erzählt. Miss Marple taucht jedoch im Verlauf der Geschichte immer wieder auf und man merkt schnell, dass sie einiges mehr weiss als die restlichen Leute im Dorf und besonders die Polizei ihr zutrauen. Mir hat die Geschichte wieder sehr gefallen. Typisch für Agatha Christie gibt es eine Reihe von Verdächtigen, die alle ihren Grund hätten Colonel Protheroe ermorden zu wollen. Die Figuren sind zudem auch wieder echt gelungen und besonders Miss Marple ist sofort sympathisch. Im Fall gibt es auch einige interessante Wendung und man ist ständig am mit rätseln wer wohl den Mord begangen hat. Zwischendurch lässt die Spannung zwar etwas nach da der Pfarrer und die Polizei ziemlich ratlos sind, doch am Ende nimmt die Geschichte nochmal richtig an Fahrt auf. Insgesamt fühlte ich mich vom ersten Fall von Miss Marple richtig gut unterhalten.

Jahrelange Vorurteile waren (natürlich) völlig unbegründet & es war ein Fest mit Miss Marple den Mörder zu finden.

Who doesn't know the famous Miss Marple and her investigation talents? When it comes to well-known detectives in classic literature, along with Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot she will belong to those who are mentioned first. I can almost imagine the gossipy, annoying and very inquisitive lady snooping around the village, and it's easy to understand why a smart character like her earned such a recognition beneath crime and mystery novels. "Murder at the Vicarage" is called the first book in the Miss Marple series, yet she only appears in a handful of scenes, irregularly interspersed in the course of this novel. In the first place, Agatha Christie writes about a colonel's death and the small town's vicar who tries to discover the murderer's identity. Most of the characters will at some point of the novel be suspected of being the wanted murderer, but the reader should expect the final reveal to be somehow unpredictable. I thought I had figured out who the killer was halfway through the novel, but the outcome was ... I could not have been more wrong. And it would indeed be surprising if anyone else was as smart as Miss Marple in the quest of figuring out the identity of the culprit. However, this also caused another one of this book's weak spots: Although it is only 270 pages long, it dragged on for the second half, as nearly no new information were added and the investigators were more or less left groping in the dark. Agatha Christie writes about very different characters trying to live in a small town where nothing ever happens - until this highly disliked man is murdered at the vicarage. As the novel is written from the first-person-perspective of the vicar, Leonard Clement, the reader has to rely on his observations, which made it even harder to guess the outcome of the murder mystery. After all, the author managed to write complicated and confusing murder mysteries with nearly no loose ends, however, something else fell by the wayside: the characters. With nearly no character development or interesting relationships present, it is hardly possible to get invested into the plot itself, and with Miss Marple being only a side character, the most interesting part of the novel was ignored for most of the time. My first Miss Marple novel, my second Agatha Christie novel, and still no fan of her works. I guess I'll be staying faithful to Sherlock Holmes!