When a poisoned cocktail meant for movie star Marina Gregg fells her admirer Heather Babcock instead, Miss Marple realizes that the police and everyone else are looking in the wrong direction. Agatha Christie's 1962 classic—the subject of numerous film and television adaptations—was inspired by a tragic tale of Hollywood, presented here in a handsome new edition that should be in everyone's mystery library. 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.

"If Agatha Christie is my literary godmother, then Miss Jane Marple is the aunt I always wanted."—Louise Penny