The Four Suspects A Miss Marple Short Story

A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.

Previously published in the print anthology The Thirteen Problems. A doctor who helped bring about the downfall of a secret German organization is convinced that the members will seek revenge

On Tuesday evening a group gathers at Miss Marple's house and the conversations turns to unsolved crimes: the case of the disappearing bloodstains; the thief who committed his crime twice over; the strange case of the invisible will; and the death-bed message about a "heap of fish".

An old friend tells Miss Marple that one of the town girls jumped off a bridge and drowned. The young woman had discovered that she was pregnant and everyone believes that she took her own life. But Miss Marple, who knows human nature deeply, does not believe it was suicide. With the help of Henry Clithering, former commissioner of Scotland Yard, they will get to the bottom of the matter and discover the murderer.

The Sittaford Mystery is Dame Agatha at her most intriguing, as a séance in a snowbound house predicts a particularly grisly murder. In a remote house in the middle of Dartmoor, six shadowy figures huddle around a table for a seance. Tension rises as the spirits spell out a chilling message: "Captain Trevelyan . . . dead . . . murder." Is this black magic or simply a macabre joke? The only way to be certain is to locate Captain Trevelyan. Unfortunately, his home is six miles away and, with snowdrifts blocking the roads, someone will have to make the journey on foot. . . .

On a jaunt to visit her friend Miss Marple, Elspeth McGillicuddy sees a man strangling a woman on a passing train. The police dismiss her observation as imagination, but Miss Marple knows better and decides to search for the corpse on her own.

Dan W. Clanton, Jr. examines the presence and use of religion and Bible in Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novels and stories and their later interpretations. Clanton begins by situating Christie in her literary, historical, and religious contexts by discussing “Golden Age” crime fiction and Christianity in England in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. He then explores the ways in which Bible is used in Christie's Poirot novels as well as how Christie constructs a religious identity for her little Belgian sleuth. Clanton concludes by asking how non-majority religious cultures are treated in the Poirot canon, including a heterodox Christian movement, Spiritualism, Judaism, and Islam. Throughout, Clanton acknowledges that many people do not encounter Poirot in his original literary contexts. That is, far more people have been exposed to Poirot via “mediated” renderings and interpretations of the stories and novels in various other genres, including radio, films, and TV. As such, the book engages the reception of the stories in these various genres, since the process of adapting the original narrative plots involves, at times, meaningful changes. Capitalizing on the immense and enduring popularity of Poirot across multiple genres and the absence of research on the role of religion and Bible in those stories, this book is a necessary contribution to the field of Christie studies and will be welcomed by her fans as well as scholars of religion, popular culture, literature, and media.