By Antoinette Klein
This story is told by Jerry Burton, an RAF flyer recovering from a crash. He has been sent to the village of Lymstock to get rest and quiet. Accompanied by his sister Joanna, Jerry soon finds that all is not as peaceful as he might have hoped. A series of poison pen letters detailing the explicit and oftentimes illicit facts of the residents’ lives is causing rather a stir. The fear escalates when an apparent suicide is followed by a murder. With so much wickedness abounding, the vicar’s wife calls in her old friend Jane Marple, whom she considers an expert on wickedness in village life.
This book is noteworthy for it is magnificent characterizations. From the community-minded doctor’s sister, to the charming spinster who rents the Burtons her home, to the dazzling governess of the lawyer’s young boys, Mrs. Christie gives us a village filled with quirky and interesting people. Most noteworthy is Megan Hunter, perhaps her finest young girl protagonist, who is transformed from the dowdy stepdaughter to an exquisite Cinderella.
The narrative style is light and entertaining, the romance sweet, and the murder rather deadly in this fun and always ingenuous supplying from the mistress of mystery.
Mrs. Christie herself recalls this story in her autobiography as a personal favored that has stood the test of time. As charming as it no doubt was when initial published in 1943, The Moving Finger is a most satisfying read.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Agatha Christie’s Psychology of Evil
By cdset
In addition to the delights one gleans from Christie’s deft, skillful plotting, incisive wit, and rich characterizations, the unfeigned strength of “The Moving Finger” is Christie’s examination of evil beneath the pristine surface. This “wickedness” lies not only under the gorgeous exteriors of the sleepy village, but likewise underneath the shiny faces of it is inhabitants.
Christie is rather adept at communication the “atmosphere that seemed tinged with evil.” When confronted with the distressing and distasteful poison pen letters appearing in the village, one of the characters exclaims, “Such a peaceful smiling happy countryside-and down underneath something evil….It’s full of festering poison and it looks as peaceful and innocent as the Garden of Eden…” In addition, Christie recognizes the dark side of humane nature, and that it is ofttimes exceedingly difficult to tell what persons are actually like under their poilte behavior. “I’m beginning to realize how little I genuinely know when it comes to anyone…In everybody’s life there are concealed chapters which they hope may never be known…”
Christie makes it clear, however, that this evil is not a supernatural phenomenon divorced from humane intervention in a particulary perceptive and unfathomed passage, “There’s too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will…God doesn’t genuinely need to impose a penalty on us…We’re so very busy punishing ourselves…” And altho “it isn’t very pleasant to look upon the fellow creatures one meets as possible criminal lunatics,” Christie takes a realistically pessimistic view of humane nature and a depicts a village filled with “gossiping, whispering women” and “selfish, grasping natures.”
“The Moving Finger” is an absorbing account of a sociopath. “Such apparently improbable persons do the most fantastic things.” Christie reminds us that the most horrifying evil ordinarily comes from the most improbable source- seemingly upright, normal humans who are hiding the most unfathonable and terrifying wickedness. “The Moving Finger” is one of her most skillfull and perceptive productions.
5 of 5 humans found the following review helpful.
cosy village atmosphere and characters
By John Austin
In a forward Agatha Christie provided for a reprint of this book, she wrote of the pleasure it was to tackle one of the classic themes, and of the outstanding pleasure she found in writing this book with it is “cosy village atmosphere and characters”.
The classic theme here is the phenomenon of the Poison Pen. The book is one of her shorter mysteries but one of the most cunningly devised. Adept at developing puzzles, she opts for presenting this one as a primary person narrative. The narrator is a young man recuperating from a flying accident, told by his doctor that he must “go and live in the country and lead the life of a vegetable for at least six months”. With his sister he rents a cottage in a little English village “of no importance whatsoever”.
Accordingly, when the poison pen letters get started circulating, it is this narrator, a stranger to the village, who decribes things as he sees them, retails all the local gossip, and reports everyone’s suspicions with regards to the writer of the letters. A murder and an evident suicide follow, and we read of the attempts of the local police to investigate.
Miss Marple therefore is introduced late in the book and, of course, she proves better at solving the mystery than everyone else. You will be an astute and alert reader if you discover whodunit before Miss Marple reveals all.
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