Thank you William Morrow Paperbacks, #partner, for the finished copy of A Pocket Full of Rye in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Published: April 19, 2022 (first published 1953)
Summary:
Now with a beautiful new series look, the bizarre death of a financial tycoon has Miss Marple investigating a very odd case of crime by rhyme.
Rex Fortescue, king of a financial empire, was sipping tea in his “counting house” when he suffered an agonizing and sudden death. On later inspection, the pockets of the deceased were found to contain traces of cereals.
Yet, it was the incident in the parlor which confirmed Miss Marple’s suspicion that here she was looking at a case of crime by rhyme . . .
My thoughts:
Moving right along in the #ReadChristie2023 Challenge, I’m 4 for 4 this year! The prompt for April is poison and the main selection is Sparkling Cyanide, however one of the alternative choices was A Pocket Full of Rye. I happened to have the alterative choice sitting on my bookshelf, sent to me last year by the publisher and decided it was a sign to finally read it…and I’m so glad I did!
This is another Miss Marple book, now my 2nd one I’ve read. Again, as with the book last month, I found it strange that she doesn’t make an appearance right away. In this book, she does show up sooner than in the last book, about halfway instead of closer to the end, but still. I find it very odd. I think I really need to start at the beginning of the series to see if this is always the case, though I suspect it might be.
I loved all the misdirection and lies that appear in this case and how it wasn’t until Miss Marple shows up that things start to make sense and that apparent random crimes all seem to be connected. The use of the rhyme was brilliantly played and once again, I was left stumped in trying to put it all together.
I do feel that Miss Marple plays a much bigger role in this book than she did in the previous book I read and I am looking forward to reading more books in this series. I do so enjoy her character, as I do all Agatha Christie books. They are just cleverly plotted but not overly done.
