A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie

Details: First published 1964; cover shown is the 1964 Collins Book Club edition. 256p.

Bought for $1.00 from a book fair.

Blurb: "Miss Marple is on holiday at the Golden Palm Hotel in the island of St Honoré. She is enjoying herself, yet there is something lacking. At home in St Mary Mead there was always something going on, something one could get one's teeth into.

Miss Marple listens politely to Major Palgrove's boring stories of his early life in Kenya. She is not paying all that much attention when he starts telling her about a murderer he has known; and when he reaches in his wallet to show Miss Marple a snapshot of that murderer, he is suddenly interrupted. Murder follows."

Verdict: All of Christie's Poirot mysteries - with the little Belgian being my favourite of her sleuths - have been reread so many times over the last decade or so that they're more of a comfort read than anything else. But because Miss Marple interested me less, I only read her novels once (and a couple not at all), so they all seem much newer when I reread them. This novel is one of Christie's later ones, and definitely not one of her best. It ranks up there with Third Girl (1966) in the short list of Christies that shouldn't have been written.