The Moving Finger

I'm writing this a bit after finishing the book, and the crime/killer apparently wasn't at all memorable to me, because I completely forgot about it until I googled it. It was a good book though, as is, in my opinion, every Agatha Christie murder mystery, but what I think sets this novel apart is the characters, and by that I mean the sibilings. I found them both really charming and funny, and their presence as outsiders in the town was relatable to the reader. They both had more personality than the average Christie character (excluding recurring ones), and while the lack of personality is not a deal-breaker, or even an issue, to me in these types of books (hot take?), it made reading this particular novel really fun.

I'm not sure how to feel about it, the whole letter idea is very intriguing, but the execution and lack of Miss Marple (she's in the book for like, 10 pages?) left me wanting a bit more. The Poirot series doesn't compare to Marple (maybe because Agatha likes for Marple to not even be in her own series?) from what I've read till now...

I have been reading through all of Christie's mysteries chronologically and this one felt very much like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but had a different ending. I must say, I loved the narrator and found myself laughing out loud at various points. I am starting to think like Christie a bit and see patterns in her plots (thirty books in I suppose that's to be expected) so I guessed the perpetrator from the point of the murder, though I am happy to say that isn't always the case. It is a Poison Pen novel, which was refreshing–though it bears nothing on Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers's famed Poison Pen novel of the same era. One thing to note: it barely can be considered a Miss Marple novel. It honestly feels like the publishers were discouraging her from writing one-off mysteries so she had to bring in a beloved character backhandedly. It's still one of my favorites thus far, and that's saying something!