The Bantrys wake to find the body of a young woman in their library, wearing an evening dress and heavy makeup. Who is she? How did she get there? And what about the other dead girl, whose charred remains are found in an old quarry? In Miss Marple's second novel, from 1942, Agatha Christie turns a cozy cliché into a fiendish puzzle—a classic for mystery fans, in a handsome new edition. The star of a dozen novels and twenty short stories, the shrewd and curious Jane Marple was inspired by Agatha Christie's grandmother and her cronies in the leafy London suburb of Ealing. Miss Marple's independent mind and acute sense of human nature—not unlike Christie's own—have made her an enduring prototype in detective fiction.

"Agatha Christie has made it awfully hard for the rest of us, because whenever we think of a clever twist—she's already done it."—Elizabeth Peters