Review: The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

“I often wonder why the whole world is so prone to generalise. Generalisations are seldom if ever true and are usually utterly inaccurate.”

3/5 stars
Turned out that this was a re-read for me. Like with many of Agatha's books, as I read tons of them a few years back and can't remember which ones I did read.
For such a short book it took me ages to read it. Mostly, because I was very busy.
But also because I was very bored. ​

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“There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.”

Miss Marple is portrayed as an old crazy lady that just happened to live next to the place where murder has taken place and she in the end is the one who solves the whole thing.  While I don't mind her taking a back seat and letting the other characters run the show - it just didn't work out well for this story. Same tactic was used in The Moving Finger, but I adored that story. 

It seems that last time I read it, I've enjoyed it more. But this time around there was just too much "going around the bush" and "useless plot twists" for my liking. The novel was only about 290 pages, but I honestly think that it could have been 200 and would still have accomplished the same thing. Dialog was repetitive at certain points and some characters were introduced that didn't add anything to the story at all (specifically Mary and Marple's nephew - useless waste of pages).

I still enjoyed it, but not as much as I enjoy some of her other works. 

“Nothing, I believe, is so full of life under the microscope as a drop of water from a stagnant pool.”