Miss Marple senses things are amiss when she visits an old friend at Stonygates, which also houses a center for delinquent youths. Her fears are confirmed when someone shoots at the administrator. The man is not injured—but another visitor is shot dead at the same moment. Coincidence? Hardly. The 1952 novel is a true classic, and this handsome new edition 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.

"I've always preferred her Jane Marple books, and find them infinitely re-readable; it hardly matters if I remember who did it."—Lawrence Block