SLEEPING MURDER

Miss Marple, almost as if she knew she wouldn't be around much longer, is her most self-effacing while she watches and warns quietly that "murder in retrospect" is the equivalent of sleeping murder which like those dogs should be let lie. However a young couple buy a house where just-married Gwenda has some deja-vu intimations of what took place their eighteen years ago and she and her husband look into the disappearance of her stepmother and the several men in her life that was. This is Miss Marple at her noticing, unobtrusive, kindly best—a perfect envoi. Dual Literary Guild selection for December in a two-in-one volume with The Murder at the Vicarage (which took place some time ago).