They Do It With Mirrors (1952)
Blurb:
My review:
Map of Stonygates
This tale of the murder of one of the Gulbrandesen trustees in a juvenile delinquents' asylum, the principal intended victim the idealist Mrs. Serrocold, married to another trustee, is rather atypical Christie. Insp. Curry functions largely by means of "Marshy inquisitions" into who was where when, with none of Christie's trade-mark adeptness at building up the motives of the flat characters shown—a grave charge of incompetence must be laid at his door, for he shows a very limited knowledge of ballistics. Miss Marple, a guest at Stonygates and friend of Mrs. Serrocold, hovers in the background for much of the story, but discovers the murderer's hidden alibi, a conjuring trick worthy of Carr, and one which, as in Carr's novels, the reader is given every opportunity of spotting (a familiarity with Death on the Nile is of great help). Two improbable coincidences alert the reader sooner than is desirable: if the quarrel between Edgar Lawson and Lewis Serrocold was contrived by the murderer, the murder must of necessity have been unpremeditated, which is impossible; and the murderer's failure to remove the letter for which we are supposed to believe the murder was committed exposes a red herring from the beginning.