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| The Moving Finger: A Miss Marple Mystery (Agatha Christie Collection) | 
| Author: Agatha Christie
Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers
Category: Book
List Price: $12.00
Buy New: $5.95
You Save: $6.05 (50%)
New (28) from $5.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 94257
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 1579126944
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9781579126940
ASIN: 1579126944
Publication Date: March 31, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New - may have a small remainder mark on the edge.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Miss Marple Lite June 25, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
RAF pilot Jerry Burton, needing a lengthy stint of R&R, moves into the village of Lymstock with his sister Joanna. Peace and quiet aren't necessarily on the local agenda, however. Burton soon finds himself on the receiving end of an anonymous poison pen letter. He's not the only person to get one, either. Though the accusations are wild, gossip and suspicion spread. Matters escalate when one letter prompts an apparent suicide and a murder soon follows. Despite all the nastiness, Christie manages to weave a cute little Cinderella story into the plot and love blossoms in the end.
THE MOVING FINGER is a typically clever and well-plotted Agatha Christie mystery. It's populated with interesting and believable characters and the clues are there for the astute reader to find. It's reportedly one of Christie's personal favorites. I liked it, too, but there are several other Miss Marple mysteries I enjoyed more. Partly, this is because I simply found some of the other cases more intriguing, but it's also because, as others have pointed out, Jane Marple plays only a peripheral role in this one. The story is told in the first person from the perspective of Jerry Burton. Miss Marple isn't even mentioned until about two-thirds of the way through the book, and even then she's only introduced as a house guest of one of the lesser characters. Her only significant role is to explain the details at the end.
THE MOVING FINGER is another quality mystery from Agatha Christie. Miss Marple fans may find this outing disappointing, however, as she plays her most minor role. I liked it, but it doesn't rank among my personal favorites.
 The Moving Finger November 30, 2006
A Miss Marple novel published in 1942, this mystery is one of Agatha Christie's own favorites. Set in what by all appearances seems to be the quiet village of Little Furze, the place where the injured pilot Jerry Burton goes with his sister Joanna to recuperate, it doesn't take long to learn that the place is in a bit of a turmoil. Someone is sending nasty letters to various residents; even Jerry and Joanna receive one accusing them of an incestuous affair. Before long a suicide and a murder occur because of the letters. Investigation shows that the letters are composed of words and passages cut from old books. Miss Marple is eventually let in on what's been going on, and just before another murder is about to take place, she solves the mystery. The story is tight and interesting. There are also a couple of love stories going on as subplots, which resolve themselves nicely by novel's end. It's a most satisfying mystery from the master.
One of Christie's Finest December 6, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a great book. The story is being told by Jerry Burton, an appealing narrarator, very human. Although the plot is great, the mystery nearly impossible to figure out, subtle clues presented throughout the book, this may make a better read the second time around, since its fun to find things that people said that meant more than one thing. The only reason it's not 5 stars is that Ms. Marple, Christie's charming lady detective, is called in as "an expert" where the local police have failed- vaguely reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes... She is hardly in the book at all, she simply explains it when the whole thing is over. Jerry Burton takes the limelight as the actual detective. Still, this is definetly one of Christie's best, and I highly recommend it!
Anonymous Letters in Thrillers July 5, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The use of anonymous letters is a plot device that used to be more popular in detective fiction than it is now. Other Christie mysteries used the idea of the anonymous letter (such as MURDER ON THE LINKS, one of the early Poirots.) THE MOVING FINGER is the culmination of Christie's thinking about this topic. Other Golden Age novels with this device include Carter Dickson's spooky NIGHT AT THE MOCKING WIDOW and, less successfully, Ellery Queen's THE SCARLET LETTERS. Clouzot's film LE CORBEAU, written around the same time as THE MOVIGN FINGER, is a wonderfully atmospheric thriller, and it has an American remake too. I suppose they're still making films about the anonymous letter, only now they're anonymous phone calls (like WHEN A STRANGER CALLS or even the "Scream" trilogy.)
Jerry Burton's a bit of a headcsse after seeing action with the RAF and doctors have ordered him to seek surcease from war in sleepy little Lymstock, where nothing has been known to happen for years, and the War seems very far away. With him as his nurse is his sister Joanna, a sophisticated young thing out of an Evelyn Waugh novel but a woman with a heart of gold and an eye for strays. Together the Burtons meet up with their fair share of village characters, most of them very well bred. The doctor, the lawyer, the minister, the banker and their wives and families. One among them, however, is an insanely calculating killer, and many villagers are receiving obscene anonymous letters which puts the whole village on edge.
Meanwhile, Jerry is seeing quite a bit of a young girl, Megan Hunter, who's quite a tomboy in manner, and seeing as though she just got out of school she's awfully young, but then again I suppose Jerry is pretty young too. Otherwise when you read about the romance that develops between Jerry and Megan there is a bit of pedophilia creeping in, or so it seems to modern eyes. Joanna finds her own romance with the town's kindly doctor, who hasn't seen a woman quite like Joanna, even up North.
The mystery is a corker. I've read the book several times and I can never guess who it is! Another thing that always surprises me is the (very late) entrance of Miss Marple. Once Marple gets to Lymstock, the book becomes a more or less conventional Miss Marple novel. I almost wish that Agatha Christie had left her out of the book entirely, for the story is so strong that Marple is very nearly a distraction!
 Poison Pen Letters June 1, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
We don't see much of Miss Marple in this one. She doesn't show up until 3/4 of the way through the book, and she doesn't have much to say or do in the pages of the book, although she does her thing outside of the pages, and we hear about it second-hand. We have the required setting for a Miss Marple mystery - a small village where all kinds of personalities are at play. And in this seemingly quiet village, we have some very nasty poison-pen letters being sent to almost everyone in the village. There is a suicide then, and after that a murder and this shows that something is not right in Lymstock. The book is carefully plotted and the characters are pure Agatha Christie, but I found the lack of Miss Marple rather off-putting, so I can only give this a 3.
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