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Kindle Price: | $14.49 Save $1.50 (9%) |
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4:50 from Paddington: A Miss Marple Mystery (Miss Marple Mysteries Book 8) Kindle Edition
In Agatha Christie’s classic mystery 4:50 From Paddington, a woman in one train witnesses a murder occurring in another passing one…and only Miss Marple believes her story.
For an instant the two trains ran side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth McGillicuddy stared helplessly out of her carriage window as a man tightened his grip around a woman's throat. The body crumpled. Then the other train drew away. But who, apart from Mrs. McGillicuddy's friend Jane Marple, would take her story seriously? After all, there are no other witnesses, no suspects, and no case -- for there is no corpse, and no one is missing.
Miss Marple asks her highly efficient and intelligent young friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow to infiltrate the Crackenthorpe family, who seem to be at the heart of the mystery, and help unmask a murderer.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherWilliam Morrow Paperbacks
- Publication dateMarch 30, 2004
- File size2945 KB
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From the Publisher
MOVING FINGER | MURDER AT THE VICARAGE | 4:50 FROM PADDINGTON | NEMESIS | MARPLE TWELVE STORIES | AT BERTRAM’S HOTEL | |
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4.5 out of 5 stars
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4.5 out of 5 stars
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Price | $11.99$11.99 | $10.99$10.99 | $12.69$12.69 | $11.89$11.89 | $16.18$16.18 | $12.79$12.79 |
BODY IN THE LIBRARY | POCKET FULL OF RYE | THEY DO IT WITH THE MIRRORS | A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED | A CARIBBEAN MYSTERY | MISS MARPLE | |
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Customer Reviews |
4.4 out of 5 stars
6,048
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5.0 out of 5 stars
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4.5 out of 5 stars
3,404
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4.4 out of 5 stars
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4.7 out of 5 stars
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Price | $10.90$10.90 | $12.79$12.79 | $11.59$11.59 | $11.79$11.79 | $12.49$12.49 | $12.49$12.49 |
Editorial Reviews
Review
One of Miss Marple's best yarns.
-- "New York Times"A model detective story; there is never a dull moment.
-- "Times (London)"Precisely what one expects: the most delicious bamboozling possible in a babble of bright talk and a comprehensive bristle of suspicion all adeptly managed to keep you much too alert elsewhere to see the neat succession of clues that catch a murderer we never so much as thought of.
-- "New York Herald Tribune"The great mistress of the last-minute switch is at it again...Even the experts have given up any attempts to out-guess Miss Christie.
-- "New Yorker"The suspense is agonizing.
-- "Daily Mail (London)"From the Back Cover
For an instant the two trains ran together, side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth witnessed a murder. Helplessly, she stared out of her carriage window as a man remorselessly tightened his grip around a woman’s throat. The body crumpled. Then the other train drew away.
But who, apart from Miss Marple, would take her story seriously? After all, there were no suspects, no other witnesses . . . and no corpse.
About the Author
Emilia Fox has won three AudioFile Earphones Awards for her narrations. She is an acclaimed and award-winning actress, most notably played the title role in the play Katherine Howard at the Chichester Festival Theatre, and Clara Copperfield in a television movie production of David Copperfield. In 2004 she began playing pathologist Nikki Alexander on the television series Silent Witness. In 2006 she garnered much praise for her role in the independent comedy-drama Cashback.
Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She died in 1976.
Product details
- ASIN : B000FC1PLQ
- Publisher : William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (March 30, 2004)
- Publication date : March 30, 2004
- Language : English
- File size : 2945 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 224 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0008196583
- Best Sellers Rank: #121,673 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #220 in Mystery Anthologies (Kindle Store)
- #596 in Read & Listen for Less
- #1,035 in Traditional Detective Mysteries (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Born in Torquay in 1890, Agatha Christie began writing during the First World War and wrote over 100 novels, plays and short story collections. She was still writing to great acclaim until her death, and her books have now sold over a billion copies in English and another billion in over 100 foreign languages. Yet Agatha Christie was always a very private person, and though Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple became household names, the Queen of Crime was a complete enigma to all but her closest friends.
Customer reviews
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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That said, I really enjoyed this one. Is it old fashioned? Sure. Does that make it boring? Absolutely not. In fact, it makes it all the more interesting. Like all of her books, it's a window into the past. Before modern day forensics there were actual brains that solved crimes. Imagine that!
The murder takes place within the first few pages, which is not always the case with Christie books. Most of the time it takes a while before we get there (e.g., Death on the Nile). The pace is near perfect; it doesn't move too fast, nor too slow. Books with too fast a pace become confusing and too slow a pace puts readers to sleep. This one is just enough that you can digest what is going on without being overwhelmed. Speaking of which, though there are a number of characters each are introduced in such a way that you can absorb who they are without it being shoved in your face. Some books worry too much about details all the way down to their life history. Not for Christie, she gets right to the point.
As for the mystery part itself, the ending isn't the typical predictable kind (I can't think of any Christie novels that are). I think most will be fully surprised. It's also worth noting that it isn't cheesy either. Or at least, I don't think so.
One thing worth noting, Miss Marple isn't in the book much. This is a surprise to me. I expected her to be the main character, but she was not. She is credited with the mystery, as well she should be, but if you're a fan of hers, be prepared to not see her as often as you would expect.
All in all this is an exceptional book! I highly recommend it to anyone who likes film noir in addition to the obvious, that being other mystery type books.
I won't recap much of the plot here, as the product description is sufficient for that purpose (and I certainly would not want to leak any spoilers.) The action commences immediately, and the murder occurs within the first pages of the book. But, there is no body, and the witness, the doddering spinster Elspeth McGillicuddy, is not considered credible by the authorities. However, she convinces her good friend, Miss Marple, that she did indeed witness the strangulation of a woman in a passing train. Miss Marple does a bit of preliminary sleuthing to determine where the body might have been tossed off the train. Then she hires a competent younger woman, Lucy Eyelesbarrow (her new understudy perhaps?), to take the house manager position at the estate of the Crackenthorpe family. The estate is near the railway line where Miss Marple presumes that the body would have been disposed of.
We meet the Crackenthorpe family members, all of whom seem to be waiting for the patriarch to kick off so they can get their hands on their share of the estate. Christie has a fine way of sketching out new characters with a brief, succinct description that provides you just enough information to decide how they fit into the picture that she is painting. None of the Crackenthorpes are particularly admirable, with the exception of Emily who seems to be trying to hold the whole estate together single handedly. Other murders start to pile up, but since Christie didn't stir up much sympathy towards those victims, their passing is not tragic.
A lot of Miss Marple's sleuthing appears to occur offstage, and when she finally swoops in to reveal the true murderer, it all seems a bit forced and hurried. However, up until then I found the mystery quite engaging, and the comings and goings of all the characters kept me turning the pages (or rather hitting the forward button) rapidly.
One aspect of Christie's writing that I especially enjoy is the interesting names - Griselda, Eyelesbarrow, McGillicuddy, Wimborne, Quimper, Crackenthorpe, et al. The unique names help you to remember the many characters that inhabit the book.
I will certainly be looking for more in the Miss Marple series, and am sure that I am well on my way to becoming an Agatha Christie fan
But let’s go back to the beginning of the story. A woman sees another woman getting strangled. Who will believe her? How will Jane Marple go about proving that there actually was a murder? And who really was the victim?
Will you figure it out? Give it your best shot.
Top reviews from other countries
The premise of this book is so unique. A murder takes place on another train that runs parallel to the one that old Elspeth McGillicuddy is in and she is determined that she witnessed a man strangling a woman to death. The next day, the murder is not reported, and neither is the body found in the days to come.
The ingenuity with which Miss Marple finds out how the murder was committed, where the body could be found, and finally, the identity of the murderer, will wow you! Go for it.