Then a kitchen maid was found murdered and her body hidden away in an unused closet, and the peaceful town was in an uproar of excitement and suspicion.
Things took a serious turn when the mousy wife of the local lawyer committed suicide after receiving hers. Pye, who collected china talkative Aimée Griffith and others. Jerry Burton, an outsider who was down for a rest on doctor’s orders, got one. Almost everyone in the quiet village seemed to be receiving them. It all began with those mysterious, threatening letters. Christie at her most subtle and her most entertaining. It needed an expert in human wickedness to solve the mystery of the moving finger. Who could it be in this peaceful, old world village who was bent on creating chaos? The police found many suspects and their investigations revealed some surprising facts but they didn’t find the criminal and the letters went on circulating. A poison pen was hard at work sending letters which were usually as ridiculous as they were unpleasant until one day-the shaft struck home and death resulted. But they soon discovered that the undercurrents of this placid backwater were both swift and dangerous. So thought Jerry Burton when he took a house there for himself and his sister Joanna. Dane Calthrop (with lobster) and bright, awkward Megan Hunter (one of Christie’s best adolescents).Īs a place to convalesce after a bad flying crash Lymstock sounded ideal. Pye a glamorous goddess of a governess (until she opens her mouth) Aimée Griffith, forthright and abominably extraverted the formidable Mrs. While not one of her best mysteries, the social comedy is delightful: the sophisticated townees the garrulous Mr. Clever touches include a memorable linguistic trick (“I can’t go on” – does this work in other languages?) and a second victim who saw nothing.Ĭhristie seems more interested in the people than the puzzle. The deception is daring in its simplicity – but transparent if you tumble to it. The plot is quite slight there’s little detection, and only one criminal sub-plot. Hers is, as others have observed, a cameo performance: a mere 12 pages – and she really doesn’t need to be in the book. The story is narrated by Jerry Burton, recuperating from a plane crash Miss Marple turns up three-quarters through, and then explains the mystery at the end.
Finger is perhaps the quintessential ‘cosy’ Christie: a small English market town, 50 years behind the times respectable professional people (lawyers and doctors) and spinsters both male and female poison-pen letters deaths neatly off-stage (one suicide, one murder) and Miss Marple knitting pink fluffy woollen things in the corner.
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