The Moving Finger (by Agatha Christie)

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We have a large collection of Agatha Christie novels, many of them bought second-hand when my sons were still living here. I still haven’t read them all, and am currently working my way through some of the unread selection. I have found some of them a bit tedious to read, but others are gripping. I’ve just finished ‘The Moving Finger’, and it’s definitely in the latter category!

The story is told in the first person by a young man called Jerry Burton. He is a pilot who was badly injured in an air crash. He’s recovering, and is doing well; but his doctor tells him to have a long convalescence in a peaceful village, away from the stress of city life, and away from well-meaning but intrusive friends.

So Jerry, who appears to be independently wealthy, rents a house in the village of Lymstock with his sister Joanna. He finds the village community to be quite friendly, if nosy; everyone knows what everyone else is doing. And before long he receives a nasty anonymous letter full of false insinuations.

He assumes it’s someone objecting to newcomers, and throws it away. But then he learns that other people in the village have also been sent these nasty letters. There’s no truth in any of them, but people still feel upset, even violated. The language is crude, and the nastiness of the style leaves them hurt, angry or - in some cases - afraid.

And then something else happens, which turns it into a much more unpleasant scenario. This is followed, a week later, by a horrible crime. Experts are called in, and Jerry does a bit of amateur detecting alongside the local and other police. He also becomes increasingly attracted to a young woman in the village…

Agatha Christie’s skill was always in her plotting rather than her characterisation, but the first person narrative works well in this story. Jerry is a likeable person, as is his sister. We know he can’t be involved in the letter-writing as it started before they ever appeared on the scene, and the letters often refer to people they don’t know, or situations they are unaware of.

But pretty much everyone else in the village is under suspicion. As ever, clues and red herrings are dropped neatly, leading the police - and the reader - along trails that lead to dead ends. I really thought I had guessed the perpetrator about half-way through; it was only in the last few pages that I realised, somewhat to my relief, that I was wrong.

The writing is crisp, the people different enough that I had little difficulty remembering them all, the conversations realistic, if a tad stilted in places. And the plotting is, of course, impeccable. When the villain is finally unmasked, and explanations made, everything makes sense. Could I have guessed…? It’s implied that Jerry should have been able to work it out, and we see everything through his eyes, so perhaps I could. But I think the red herrings were too well planted. I was so certain I was right that I could hardly bear to put the book down, and read it in just two or three sittings.

The book cover says that this is a ‘Miss Marple Mystery’, so I was quite looking forward to investigations and discussions with Christie’s famous elderly lady. As it was, Miss Marple only appears in the last two chapters, and while she (inevitably) works out who did it, she doesn’t appear at all in the main part of the story. It’s my only gripe; if the book had not mentioned her, I would have been pleasantly surprised at her appearance rather than disappointed that she was not brought in earlier.

First published in 1943, 'The Moving Finger', along with most of Agatha Christie's other novels, is regularly re-printed in new editions.

Definitely recommended if you like this kind of mid-20th century light crime fiction.

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