A Murder is Announced

A Murder is Announced is one of Agatha Christie's most ingenious mysteries and a masterpiece of the Miss Marple series. First published in 1950, it showcases the Queen of Crime at the height of her powers, crafting a puzzle so brilliantly constructed that readers have been marveling at its audacity for over seventy years.
The story begins with a most unusual advertisement in the Chipping Cleghorn Gazette: "A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks, at 6:30 p.m. Friends please accept this, the only intimation." The residents of the quiet English village treat it as a game—a murder mystery party, perhaps—and arrive at Little Paddocks expecting entertainment. What they get is murder.
When the lights go out and shots ring through the darkness, a stranger lies dead in Miss Blacklock's drawing room. But was he the killer or the intended victim? And was the shooting part of a robbery gone wrong, or something far more sinister? As Inspector Craddock investigates, the case grows increasingly puzzling—until Miss Jane Marple arrives from St. Mary Mead, her sharp eyes missing nothing and her knowledge of human nature proving once again that evil wears many masks.
Christie populates her tale with an unforgettable cast of suspects: the mysterious Mitzi, the enigmatic Patrick and Julia, the nervous Phillipa Haymes, and Miss Blacklock herself, whose past holds secrets that may prove deadly. The solution, when it comes, is both surprising and inevitable—the hallmark of Christie at her finest.
This edition from LibriHouse.com presents the complete novel—a triumph of plotting that earned Christie the title "Duchess of Death."