My Rating - 8.5/10
It
has been quite long since I last reviewed a book. I have read a large number of
books in this time (close to a hundred, according to my Goodreads account), but
never really got the energy up to pen down a review. I feel it is time to get
back to business.
I am
here to review ‘The Moving Finger’ by Agatha Christie today. I must say that I
have a job here that is easy and difficult at the same time - easy, because she is
one of my favorite authors and ‘The Moving Finger’ is further one of my
childhood favorites; difficult, because, well, how does one review a
masterpiece?
This
lockdown has given me this chance to be at home for months, after staying out
of town for about 15 years, and I have suddenly got access to my childhood
collection of books. I read Agatha Christie, for the umpteenth time, and still
got the same thrill from the story as I had done 15 years back. As is the case
with many of the Golden Age Mysteries, the story effortlessly mixes romance with
murder mystery. It generates ‘butterflies in the stomach’ for the young heart,
while mixing the thrill of a detective story for the elderly readers. This is
the fourth novel in Agatha Christie’s series based on Miss Marple. Miss Marple
is an elderly spinster with a knack for the deficiencies in human character.
This enables her to solve murders that even the police scratch their heads
about, by drawing parallels with characters she has met in her dainty old
village of St. Mary Mead. The stories portray the old-world charm of rural
England and makes one yearn to experience its lazy bucolic gossiping
atmospheres. The stories also bring out the fact that human nature stays the
same, whether one is in a small village or a giant metropolis.
The
story takes place in a lazy outlying village in England, where a mysterious
poison-pen is sending vile letters all around. When a woman falls prey to the infidel
accusations made by these anonymous letters, albeit inaccurate, she succumbs to
the humiliation brought about by these allegations, and commits suicide. Or
does she? Nobody questions the verdict of suicide, except the master investigator
of human character, Miss Marple. When the wrong woman is arrested for the
anonymous letters, Miss Marple steps forward and saves the day by exposing the real
murderer.
Another
amazing fact about the story is that the end is completely surprising and
sudden. One can keep guessing who the murderer can be - one of the greatest
hobbies of all murder mystery enthusiasts - but will never come to the
conclusion which the author reaches. That is one of the attractions of Agatha
Christie’s prose, which has made generations of readers swarm to read her
books.
Overall,
when the mood is for some nice, light-hearted, feel-good read, this is a go-to
book for me. If you have not read this masterpiece already, it is time to spend
some quality lockdown time on this little one.
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