Agatha Christie’s The Moving Finger is a Miss Marple mystery that features very little Miss Marple. The narrator is Jerry Burton, who has come to a little village with his sister Joanna to recover from an injury. He unfolds the story and Miss Marple doesn’t show up until sixty percent in. Even then, she plays a minimal role except at the end when the mystery is solved.
The village has been plagued with anonymous poison pen letters sent to various residents. Jerry and Joanna even receive one shortly after they arrive. The letters make many sexual insinuations and the like, upsetting the recipients. One recipient, Mrs Symmington, the village lawyer’s wife, becomes so distraught that she takes her own life. Shortly after this, her maid is murdered. Are the two connected?
There are many well drawn characters, including the local doctor and his sister, the rector and his wife, various servants, a bachelor, Mrs Symmington’s daughter from her first marriage, and Emily Barton, who leased her house to Jerry and Joanna.
The ending is a bit anticlimactic and there is a very odd moment where Jerry reflects on the deaths and cheerfully thinks, “What the hell! We’ve all got to die sometime.” Very compassionate, Jerry.
I would rate this book a three. It’s enjoyable, as all Christies are to me, but a bit flaccid at the end.
