A woman glimpses a crime in a passing train, but no one finds a body, and only Miss Marple believes her story
The crime nobody saw
Mrs. McGillicuddy is travelling to visit her old friend Jane Marple when another train runs alongside hers for a moment. Through its window she sees a man attacking a woman. She reports it at once, but the police search the line and find nothing at all. Miss Marple believes every word, works out where a body could have been hidden, and recruits the remarkable Lucy Eyelesbarrow to investigate from the inside.
Who will enjoy it
Christie fans, readers who love a country-house puzzle, and anyone who enjoys a clever, independent heroine doing the legwork.
What you will get
An inventive Miss Marple mystery that begins with a crime glimpsed from a train window and leads to a gloomy country house full of quarrelling heirs and old secrets.
4:50 from Paddington Facts: Pages, Genre and Setting
Genre
Mystery & Thriller · Miss Marple · Train mystery · Country house
Length
288 pages · ≈ 8 h
More about this book
The opening is one of Christie's best hooks, and the solution to the missing body is ingenious. Lucy, a highly educated woman who chooses to work as a top-class housekeeper, takes a post at Rutherford Hall, home of the miserly old Mr. Crackenthorpe and his grown children, all of whom have an eye on the family money. She cooks superb meals, plays golf on the grounds and searches for clues, and several of the men in the house start to fall for her.
Miss Marple herself stays mostly in the background, doing her thinking from a nearby town, which some readers miss. But the dynamic between her calm intelligence and Lucy's energy is a pleasure, and Inspector Craddock adds a dry official counterpoint. The family is full of plausible suspects, each with a motive tied to an inheritance.
The middle third relies heavily on conversations, and the final twist depends on a detail that some find a bit convenient. Still, it is a lively, very readable entry. Lucy is one of the most likeable characters Christie ever created: practical, witty and quietly brave. About 288 pages in the William Morrow paperback.
The Body in the Library
A Murder Is Announced
A Pocket Full of Rye
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
Murder at the Vicarage
Dumb Witness
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The A.B.C. Murders
The Hollow
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
Lord Edgware Dies
The Mystery of the Blue Train