“Sleeping Murder” by Agatha Christie

I hope you're not getting bored of reading about Agatha Christie novels. I certainly am not getting bored of reading them! I'm even a little bit sad that I only have one Miss Marple book of short stories remaining. On the other hand . . . I'm not sad to the point of wanting to binge Christie's other 52 books. I am looking forward to a bit more variety in my reading diet in the near future.

So, Sleeping Murder. I’ve definitely read this one before, and I even remembered (correctly) who the murderer was. So I didn’t  have the fun of guessing this time, but that didn't matter, because I really love this story. I think my favorite part about it is the slow reveal about the house. It’s so deliciously suspenseful and intriguing. Gwenda buys a house and it feels like home and she makes discovery after discovery about it . . . if I hadn't already known the truth, I wonder if I might have guessed it?

While chronologically this was the last Miss Marple book published, I understand now why it was sold in the first of three boxed sets. This book actually takes place before The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side. I have deduced this based on two facts. In that book, Colonel Bantry has already passed away, and Miss Marple has aged enough that her doctor has told her she must stop gardening, whereas in Sleeping Murder, Colonel Bantry makes a brief appearance (because he is still alive, not because he is a ghost!) and Miss Marple spends quite a bit of time pulling weeds (and this is not because she is given to ignoring her doctor's orders). The interesting explanation for this temporal discrepancy is explained by Wikipedia: Agatha Christie wrote this book in the 1940s but it was not published until after her death.