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‘You’re thinking of something special – of something – what is it you’re hinting at?’ Don’t, I beg of you, start to uncover things that may – well, that may – how shall I put it? – that might upset and distress you.’ You are newly married and are happy together.

‘You are two very nice and charming young people (if you will allow me to say so). Is it real or imaginary? Fortunately, West’s Aunt Jane is on hand to help investigate and find a solution – although her advice from the start is to “let sleeping murder lie”, as a number of revelations could spell danger…

Making her escape to London for a break, she stays with the novelist Raymond West and his wife and it is on a visit to the theatre that some words from a play trigger a vision of a murder from the past. However, as she explores Hillside, she has a number of uncanny experiences where she appears to know things about the house of which she can’t possibly be aware. Having bought the house and moved in, Gwenda begins to get her home ready for her husband’s arrival. Chance (or fate?) leads her to a house called Hillside which feels instantly as if it will be home. Recently married to Giles, who will follow her soon, she’s excited to be making a new life in a new country. The book opens with a young woman, Gwenda Reed, arriving in the UK from her home of New Zealand in search of a house. This potentially throws up some contradictions, but Miss Marple’s final outing is a joy from start to finish. In the end, of course, she did, so the two stories were kept on standby until the 1970s. During World War 2, because of the precariousness of life, Christie had written the last stories of her two great detectives in case she didn’t make it through the conflict. “Sleeping Murder”, like “Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case” which had been released shortly before Christie’s death, had actually been written some decades before publication. I still have my original paperback, bought at the time, and picking it up was a bit of a trip into the past. 1976 is a particularly poignant year, however, as Christie had sadly died in the January and so the posthumous release of “Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple’s Final Case” was something of an occasion.

I’m a lifelong lover of her books, and so frankly any excuse for a revisit suits me. It’s always a joy to find that one of our club weeks is a year which contains some Agatha Christie titles (and she had such a long writing career that it’s often the case!).