Nemesis

Nemesis is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie (1890–1976) and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in November 1971 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. It was the last Miss Marple novel the author wrote, although Sleeping Murder was the last Miss Marple novel to be published. Miss Marple first encounters Jason Rafiel in A Caribbean Mystery, where they solve a mystery. In his will, Rafiel leaves another mystery for Miss Marple to solve. Nemesis received generally positive reviews at the time of publication. It was described as "astonishingly fresh" with a "devilish fine" confrontation and overall was "quite worthy of the Picasso of the detective story". It is a "first-rate story" in a "traditional detective novel". The novel is "readable and ingenious" and "Miss Christie remains unflagging" at age 80. A later review by Barnard is the only negative note, stating "The garden paths we are led up are neither enticing nor profitable," and Barnard rates Christie's later novels generally not as good as earlier ones. Recent analyses of the plot and characters in this novel find homosexual themes, but the character "Miss Marple seems to view the passionate friendship between women as just a phase in their life", which was "a conventional view, held by people of Marple's generation and social class.