“Marple: Twelve New Agatha Christie mysteries”

This book was SO much fun to read. I don’t know how you feel about Agatha Christie, but I love her mysteries and tend to compare all others (unfavorably, most of the time) to hers. So this book definitely caught my eye, although I was aware that it could go badly wrong: it’s a collection of mysteries in short story form, each written in the style of Agatha Christie with Miss Marple as the main character. As good as that sounds, if it's not written by Christie herself you never know. 

Luckily the risk paid off! Each author did a great job channeling Christie. I was afraid they might go too far trying to “make it their own” but instead it seemed like each author’s goal was faithfulness to the original material. Sometimes so much so that each story appeared to mention the same things (nephew Raymond, a polite tipple, how constant human nature is) which had both the positive effect of making them seem like real Miss Marple stories and the negative effect of making me wonder if all the authors were told ahead of time which elements they were required to include. (This was ok, though, and did not dampen my enthusiasm for the book.) Besides, I’m sure Agatha Christie herself never wrote a Miss Marple story without mentioning human nature more than once!

Recently the short story format has worked so well for me, as it’s easy to dip into briefly whenever I have a moment. And it was fun to have something I was always so eager to pick up. Now I need to find something new to take its place!