REVIEW | The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie

AUTHOR: Agatha Christie

GENRE: FICTION

ISBN: 0007120842

RELEASE DATE: JUL 1942

EDITION RELEASE: 2012

PAGES: 299 PAGES

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

★★★★

This is the third full-length novel in the Miss Marple series. The book was written from the first-person perspective, following Jerry Burton who was injured in an airplane accident, so he follows his doctor’s advice, moving to a small village where nothing happens called Lymstock with his sister Joanna to have some quiet recovering time. Little did they know what they would experience.

Because it’s a first-person perspective, this book feels different from other Miss Marple stories, and it’s the first time we are following an outsider of the village, and learn the local custom with him. And same as Jerry Burton, I enjoyed learning the villagers’ personalities and are amused by the local orders they are following.

There are so many other things to uncover in this village besides the mystery. Gossips, relationships, people’s foibles. Although it’s one of Miss Marple stories, she didn’t show up until the last third of the book. So all the learning is done by the protagonist and we missed the process where Miss Marple learnt about the villagers, and her clever comments about people seem a little bit abrupt.

The mystery itself is well designed and twisting. But as one of the flaws of reading this book as a contemporary reader, I foresaw some of the twists that happened in the book since they have been borrowed by so many other books and media works already. But that shows you how smart Agatha Christie is to design and development classic mystery tactics that people wanted to follow.

One thing that confused me is, it was never clear how old Jerry and Joanna Burton is at the beginning part of the book. Since Agatha’s main characters are usually elderly people, it takes me a while to realize Jerry and Joanna are both very young. So some things happened in the book that confused me for a very long time. But as soon as I found they are younger than I thought, everything became clear.

I also watched the BBC adaptation of this novel starring Joan Hickson, and what a fantastic adaptation! It changed the plot a little bit to have Miss Marple appear throughout the whole story but didn’t steal the thunder from Jerry and Joanna Burton. And the setting and the designs of this adaptation feel a lot more elegant compares to the other adaptation featuring Geraldine McEwan that I watched for 20 minutes. So I highly recommend Joan Hickson’s adaptation if you are interested in watching this book on screen.