A Pocket Full of Rye (Miss Marple Mysteries),   ISBN:9780451199867

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No one could create puzzlers like Dame Agatha Christie. A Pocket Full of Rye is so jam-packed with red herrings, Christie could've taken the story towards a half dozen or so different resolutions (at least!). The victim, Rex Fortescue, was a thoroughly unlikable man, and the dysfunctional family he leaves behind are, for the most part, equally unpleasant. The incredibly competent Inspector Neele is assigned to investigate the case, and what at first seems like a "routine" poisoning case soon grows into a veritable maze of lies and misdirection - beginning with the curious discovery of rye in Rex's pockets. When Rex's much younger widow is subsequently poisoned while taking tea, and the maid is found murdered by the clothesline, Neele struggles to find the connection between these seemingly random crimes.

Miss Jane Marple barely appears in this novel, but her scenes are critical in revealing the killer's identity. She's the catalyst that helps Neele connect the threads of these seemingly random killings. I was quite impressed with Neele's character - for my money he's one of Christie's most interesting inspectors. He's extremely intelligent, intuitive, and knows how to read people. Most importantly, he knows how to use a person's tendency to underestimate him. He's not one of those investigators who must have every clue handed to him by the "civilian" or "amateur" sleuth. Christie could've written more novels featuring Neele's character and I wouldn't have complained at all.

Christie incorporated rhymes or famous quotes as clues in her mysteries on more than one occasion (Poirot's One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (Hercule Poirot) or Tommy and Tuppence's By The Pricking Of My Thumbs (Tommy and Tuppence), to name just a few). Pocket probably isn't one of my favorites - the pool of suspects is relatively limited after all. But Christie throws so many misdirections and possible motives into the setting of this dysfunctional, very English, household that it's a delight to spend a few hours with Neele and Marple sorting through the red herrings in order to reveal the culprit.

Customer Rating: 

A good Miss Marple mystery. Though Miss Marple is not mentioned in it as often as I'd expect. At the center of a mystery is a very unpleasant family. They are not likeable characters. The plot twists got me again, and the murderer turned out to be someone I did not want it to be! The very last page is priceless. Reading the last page made the whole book worthwhile. Don't know how Christie does that...

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What "improvements" have been made for the Signet edition? There are already major differences in punctuation, word choices, and scene breaks between the original Collins and Dodd Mead editions of this novel. There are further differences between the Dodd Mead editions republished by Random House/Avenel and the Dodd Mead editions republished by Simon & Shuster/Pocket. There are further additions still in the Bantam, Berkley, and Black Dog & Leventhal editions. For every publishing house putting out her works, there seem to be a new batch of editors altering Agatha Christie's words and the sound of her voice. What's the matter with these publishers? Whose voice do they think we want to hear when we sit down to a novel by Agatha Christie? And what will she sound like twenty years from now? It's frightening that her estate has failed to see the importance of guarding her words as she wrote them. Please tell me I'm not the only one here who senses that a crime has been committed.

Customer Rating: 

"A Pocket Full of Rye" may perhaps be the best novel Christie wrote that features Miss Jane Marple. It is, at heart, a mystery with an ingenious setup that revolves around a familiar nursery rhyme. With murders happening aplenty and somewhat unexpectedly, this is a mystery that will keep readers on their toes until the very end.

When Rex Fortescue is poisoned, suspicion immediately falls upon his young, second wife, an unfaithful woman who definitely had a motive to kill her husband. As do several (if not all) of his family members. Yet when a second poisoning claims the live of Mrs. Fortescue, she is wiped out as a suspect, but someone else within the family is definitely confirmed as the murderer. Almost every family member, or someone connected with them, had something to gain from these two deaths. Miss Marple becomes involved because one of her old serving girls is the third murder victim, filling out the last two lines of the nursery rhyme. Miss Marple helps put the detective in charge along the right track, separating murder from pranks, and finding the heartless killer among the family ranks.

"A Pocket Full of Rye" is a fast-paced mystery, as are many of Christie's works, but it is spurred on by its unique story and a compelling cast of characters. As CID Inspector Neele says many times, every member of the Fortescue family is 'unpleasant', as are most of the people who work for them. As with other Christie works where Miss Marple helps out a detective, the mystery is solved but justice isn't necessarily served out in the end.

Customer Rating: 

Ok, there is little point reviewing an Agatha Christie mystery. It would be equivalent to saying that Kasparov plays a good game of chess, or that Mike Tyson hits hard. You just know that Dame Christie can spin a great yarn of intrigue, and this is no exception. Pocket Full of Rye beings with a dead body (with a pocket full of rye no less!) and suspects aplenty. As it turns out, almost everyone in the house had a reason for offing poor Mr. Fortescue. Then more murders occur, which by definition one would think would make the mystery easier to solve as there are less suspects. However, Ms. Christie is too clever for that, and much as in And Then There Were None, the reader is baffled until the very end.

My only [small] complaint is that Miss Marple is a relatively small part of the novel, and it would have been nice to see a tad more of her.

Relic113