I decided to re-read this mystery, as part of my 10-year blog anniversary celebrations, as it is the 10th Miss Marple novel.
However, before I dive into talking about my reading experience, I have a couple of announcements:
- In my last post I launched my 10-year blog anniversary competition, where first prize is ten books. So, it is definitely a giveaway you don’t want to miss. Here’s the link.
- Recently on Gum Road I have released a digital study resource for Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage (1930), which can be used individuals or groups. You can check that out here, for more information.
Synopsis
‘An old-fashioned London Hotel is not quite as reputable as it makes out… When Miss Marple comes up from the country for a holiday in London, she finds what she’s looking for at Bertram’s Hotel: traditional decor, impeccable service and an unmistakable atmosphere of danger behind the highly polished veneer. Yet, not even Miss Marple can foresee the violent chain of events set in motion when an eccentric guest makes his way to the airport on the wrong day…’
Overall Thoughts
The hotel is the first character of the book that we meet. Often in post WW2 crime fiction, we are told about how the characters have been affected by the conflict, but in Christie’s novel it is the effect upon the buildings of London, which come under focus. Across the first page or so the pronoun ‘you’ crops up a lot, making the description of the hotel feel more directed personally towards the reader, as though they were a prospective customer contemplating coming to stay at Bertram’s. The hotel has been modernised discreetly as it tries to retain its old-world vibe. This is a hotel which aims to accommodate everyone, yet Christie is not long in showing us the illusions conjured by the management and staff. For example, Mr Humfries lets impoverished aristocrats and society folk have rooms at cheaper rates as they create the atmosphere which draws in the rich American tourists. This gives the opening of this book a theatrical feel, as though the hotel was a kind of stage.
Looking back at the way things used to be, and accepting change are two ongoing themes of the narrative. A large part of this is undoubtedly centred on the hotel itself, but even St Mary Mead is woven into this discussion. Lady Selina opines that it is ‘such a sweet unspoilt village’ and she assumes it is ‘just the same ever’. Miss Marple has to contradict her on this point as St Mary Mead now has a new housing estate and the shops on the high street have changed and modernised.
Another comparison between the past and the present concerns mothers and their daughters. Miss Marple feels quite sorry for young girls today, musing to herself:
‘These poor young things. Some of them had mothers, but never mothers who seemed to be any good – mothers who were quite incapable of protecting daughters from silly affairs, illegitimate babies, and early and unfortunate marriage. It was all very sad.’
This is the first of several passages in which girls are portrayed as weak, vulnerable and foolish, and therefore in need of additional protection – mainly it seems from men (who are in no way admonished). Young girls and women are regarded as problems instead. This thematic thread appealed to me less upon re-read, but I can see in this first example it has perhaps been positioned where it is, because a few lines later we are introduced to Bess Sedgwick, the antonym of the respectable and “good” mother. She chose a life of adventure and danger, and deliberately cut herself off from her daughter, Elvira. However, this decision is soon to be undone in this story… The moment when Bess spots her daughter across the hotel lobby, we get the fun Christie trope of the fatal or meaningful glance. This occurs in more than one Miss Marple novel, and it usually involves a character looking over someone else’s shoulder and seeing something or someone which alarms them greatly. You just know something bad is going to come from it.
The first three chapters see a lot of characters coming and going, but Christie is sets things out well for later developments, although perhaps signals things a little too well. But chapter four removes us from Bertram’s Hotel and takes us to a meeting at Scotland Yard, where many officials are wanting to crack down on organised crime, particularly large-scale robberies. This is quite a contrast to the hotel milieu and its clientele, and the reader might be curious to see how it all joins up.
One thing I noticed during this re-read was the reoccurring motif of food and characters’ demonstrative enjoyment of it. This is most prevalent at the beginning of the novel where there are buttered muffins, seed cake, doughnuts, eggs (poached the “proper way”) and fresh rolls with marmalade, honey and jam. I started regretting my decision to read this book just before bed, as it made me rather hungry! I did wonder if the excess in food was part and parcel of the general lack of balance within the lives of the characters. For example, mothers are labelled as too hands on or too hands off. Bess and her daughter, Elvira also demonstrate opposites. Even robberies are either very small or very big.
Elvira’s strand in the novel is not as big as I remember it to be, which upon reflection I did not mind as she is not a character I could engage with or really care about. I found her rather annoying. Instead, the main thrust of the plot is the mail train robbery and the disappearance of Canon Pennyfather. As plot points, they did appeal to me more than Elvira’s situation, but in both cases the mysteries attached to them are fairly obvious. It is not too difficult for example to hazard a guess as to who is involved in the train robbery for instance.
Nevertheless, I am not sure this novel knows what it wants to be, a detective story or a thriller. It awkwardly sits between the two. One consequence of this is that the focus of the plot becomes split, maybe even a little fractured. Despite the hotel being a great place for paths to cross, a huge chunk of the book takes place outside of Bertram’s and the interaction of characters becomes more restricted due to the fact they are so disparate.
Miss Marple is well suited to the environs of Betram’s Hotel, but she does not really fit with the rest of the plot and largely falls off the page. She remains peripheral until near the end when the police start pushing her into the story more and even invite her back to the hotel for the revelation scene (which I did not fully buy into). Miss Marple really doesn’t do a lot compared to other books in the series, aside from overhear a couple of things. Her lack of sleuthing is a shame. The cases are progressed mostly through police hunches which pay off and detective work off the page. I think it might have been more interesting to have the action of the novel set more inside the hotel and to have a stronger single crime to focus upon. It feels a little like Elvira’s subplot is added for the dramatic finale, but also because the other crimes in the novel are insufficient to fill the page count.
The ending is surprisingly cold, and everything is a bit too quick, like playing fast forward on a film (in comparison to the first half which operated more slowly). At Bertram’s Hotel felt like a mish mash of plots and I am not sure the final combination feels entirely right.
Rating: 3.5/5
See also: Brad has also reviewed this novel here.