MISS MARPLE

Don't look for any unfamiliar gems or juicy rediscoveries in this gathering of 20 stories featuring Christie's #2 star, Miss Marple of St. Mary Mead. Thirteen of them originally appeared in 1932's The Tuesday Club Murders (called Thirteen Problems in Britain)—and that cozy collection has been a paperback perennial ever since. The others first arrived in The Regatta Mystery (1939), Three Blind Mice (1948), and Double Sin (1961)—with encore appearances in such compilations as 13 for Luck (1961), Surprise! Surprise! (1965), and 13 Clues for Miss Marple (1966). Still, aficionados of fleecy, gently shrewd Miss M. will appreciate having all these tales together in one volume—especially such ingenious standouts as "Motive v. Opportunity," "The Tuesday Night Club," "The Affair at the Bungalow," and the much-anthologized "Tape-Measure Murder." And if none of these puzzles offers the most dazzling Christie short-story craft or the most memorable Marple portraiture, all of them feature solid plotting, crisp narration, and regular dollops of English-village charm (starkly shaded by Miss M.'s no-nonsense view of human nature).