What Mrs. McGillicudy Saw!

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This edition is for readers to whom English is a second language. It is the readers digest version of a great book. What I enjoy about Agatha Christie is the richness of her scene setting, language and depth of characters.. all missing in the Collins edition.

Old and new readers of Agatha Christie's whodunits will not be disappointed with her 1957 puzzler. It has an unforgettable opening sequence, an ingenious denouement, and an interesting sleuth, especially created for the occasion, named Lucy Eylesbarrow. Although it is the elderly Jane Marple who exerts her powers of detection, she does it by remote control while her much younger friend does the spadework - or the domestic work. As Agatha Christie explains, "The point about Lucy Eylesbarrow was that all worry, anxiety, and hard work went out of a house when she came into it." Accordingly, the tertiary-trained domestic, Lucy, is soon installed in Rutherford Hall, where Jane Marple believes a body thrown from a train might be hidden. Surprises, further murders, gossip, marriage proposals, and poisonings follow in rapid succession, so that before you know it, the hours have sped by, the murderer is revealed, and you admit that once again you were quite unable to guess whodunit. Agatha Christie adds to the usual cozy elements of her murder mysteries a heavy involvement with passenger trains, timetables and railway matters so beloved of the British. Otherwise you'll find the book fits into the pattern of the dysfunctional family's struggles being worked out with a particularly stubborn, callous and crusty old man as the family's head. Feature film and TV adaptations of this novel have been made, the most faithful to the text featuring Joan Hickson who also can be heard in an unabridged reading on audiotapes.

Elspeth McGillicuddy had spent a busy day Christmas shopping in London so when she settled into her comfortable 1st class train compartment on her way to visit her friend it was natural that she dozed off for a few minutes. It was most unsettling that she woke up just in time to see a murder being committed in a passing train. It was understandable that the train conducter did not believe this elderly lady's fantastic story. It was fortunate that Mrs. McGillicuddy's friend was none other than Jane Marple. Miss Marple believed her friend was not imagining whole thing. When the police found no evidence of the crime Miss Marple began to investigate for herself. She located the most likely place a body could be disposed of, a large estate owned by the Crackenthorpe family and arranged for a confederate, Lucy Eyelesbarrow to work for the family. The Crackenthorpe family is another of Christie's large dysfunctional families dominated by a disagreeable father (Luther), downtrodden daughter (Emma), ambitious son (Harold) and a pair of blacksheep - the artistic Cedric and the slightly crooked Alfred. Two other siblings have died, Edmund and Edith. Edith's husband, Bryan and son, Alexander are also part of the household. The body is found, more murders commited, the culprit unmasked and the true motive revealed in dramitic fashion by Miss Marple. Along the way romance flourishes and leaves the reader with an unanswered question. The family is very much like characters from similiar families in other books, (HERCULE POIROT'S CHRISTMAS, A POCKET FULL OF RYE, CROOKED HOUSE and others). This, coupled with the various titles this story has had over the years - WHAT MRS. McGILLICUDDY SAW, EYEWITNESS TO MURDER and MURDER SHE SAID, could lead a reader to think they had read this one before. Do not pass this one by, it is worth reading for the delightful Lucy Eyelesbarrow alone!

Ten lashes with a wet noodle to whoever changed the original fun title of "What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!" to the boring old "4:50 From Paddington". Thank goodness they couldn't tamper with the delicious treat inside. What Mrs. McGillicuddy saw is a murder outside her train window, on another train running parallel to hers. However, not only can Mrs. McGillicuddy not convince anyone she saw a murder, they can't even find a body. Whoever thought he was committing the perfect crime, however, didn't take into account Mrs. McGillicuddy's old friend, Miss Marple, eighty-plus years old and sharp as a tack, and Miss Marple knows that, body or no body, Mrs. McGillicuddy is no fool; if she says she saw a murder, somebody got murdered. So all they have to do is: first, find the body, and second, find the murderer. To help in her search (she's not getting any younger after all), Miss Marple enlists the aid of Lucy Eyelesbarrow, one of the best of Agatha Christie's creations, a brilliant, no-nonsense young woman who actually finds the victim, a young French woman, strangled and interred in a stone sarcophagus located in a beat-up old barn at Rutherford Hall, a run-down estate owned by crotchety old Mr. Crackenthorpe, who's in no hurry to expire and leave the estate to his three sons and his spinster daughter. Someone's after the estate, though, and doesn't want to share the goodies either, because the body count starts to pile up at Rutherford Hall even as Miss Marple is unwinding the tangled skein of events that leads to a solution of the crime. Agatha Christie seems to have had fun writing this book; it zips along like a runaway train and we're with it right to the end. It's a shame Mrs. McGillicuddy never appeared in a subsequent book because she and Miss Marple are an inspired pairing; much more than Poirot's straight man, Hastings, Mrs. McGillicuddy has a fund of plain common sense and mother-wit that compliment Miss Marple's shrewd insight and would make the two of them a terrific detective team. This book is right up there with Christie's best.

In "The 4:50 From Paddington" Agatha Christie gives us another in her long list of detective stories involving a large family at their estate. This is, in my opinion, one of the best, and begins when Elspeth McGillicuddy, a friend of Miss Marple's, is returning from Christmas shopping in London and on her way to visit Jane in St. Mary Mead. Her train is running alongside another one on a nearby track, and Mrs. McGillicuddy has an excellent view inside the parallel carriage of the other train. What she sees is the back of a man strangling a woman. No one believes Mrs. McGillicuddy since no corpse is found and no injured woman turns up at any hospital. Only Miss Marple believes her friend. Although Mrs. McGillicuddy is leaving for Ceylon to spend Christmas with her son, Miss Marple continues her quest to prove her friend's story. First she books passage on the same train and narrows the search for where a body should have been thrown to the area around Rutherford Hall, the large family estate of the Crackenthorpes. The family consists of the semi-invalided and grouchy Mr. Crackenthorpe, his daughter Emma, three sons, a son-in-law, and a grandson. At least four of the men are likely candidates for the strangler. Because Miss Marple is not young enough to physically search for the body in unknown territory, she engages Lucy Eyelesbarrow, one of Christie's most interesting female creations. Lucy quickly gains employment at Rutherford Hall as a domestic and busily does all the legwork for Miss Marple. Meanwhile, Jane Marple has taken up residence at a nearby home and advises and assists Lucy. In 1961, this became the basis for "Murder, She Said," the first of four films starring Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple. Although it deviates from the book, most notably in the omission of Lucy, it is enjoyable and worth viewing.

This book was interesting from beginning to end. This book was full of great,well developed characters.It was such a thrill at the end.The setting,at Rutherford Hall,and the English countryside was magnificent.Bits and pieces in the middle were slow but other than that it was great.If your looking for a great Miss Marple Novel this is it.