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    Sleeping Murder
    Sleeping Murder
    Sleeping Murder
    Audiobook6 hours

    Sleeping Murder

    Written by Agatha Christie

    Narrated by Stephanie Cole

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A strange house A ghost from the past

    As soon as she moves into Hillside, Gwenda knows there’s something strange about this house.

    A sealed room. A hidden door. The apparition of a young woman being strangled.

    But strangest of all – this all seems quite familiar.

    As her friend Jane Marple investigates, the answer seems to lie in a crime committed nearly twenty years ago.

    The killer may have gotten away with murder. But Miss Marple is never far behind.

    Never underestimate Miss Marple

    ‘Reading a perfectly plotted Agatha Christie is like crunching into a perfect apple: that pure, crisp, absolute satisfaction.’
    Tana French

    ‘Miss Marple is spry, shrewd and compassionate.’
    Sunday Telegraph

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateNov 13, 2006
    ISBN9780007252206
    Sleeping Murder
    Author

    Agatha Christie

    Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She died in 1976, after a prolific career spanning six decades.

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    Reviews for Sleeping Murder

    4/5

    1,000 ratings40 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title to be a very good and enjoyable book. They appreciate the well-voiced narration and the subtle mechanism at play. The opening chapters are admired, and the characters are great. Although the plot is less convoluted than expected, it is still enjoyable. The path to the conclusion is interesting, and the murder mystery is brought to life in a wonderful and evocative way. Overall, this book is excellent and highly recommended.

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      I love Miss Marple mysteries. This had an excellent narrator!!
    • 5/5
      Excellent book with great emotive narration, highly recommend to all
    • 5/5
      Very good, and one of new favourite Miss Marple stories!
    • 5/5
      A very subtle mechanism at play. I admire the opening chapters of this book very much, and enjoyed the spunky young couple. Lots of great characters and superb work by Jane Marple. Wish I could find such a lovely little house ...
    • 3/5
      Less convoluted than I expected it to be. But still enjoyable.
    • 3/5
      In which a young woman's haunting memories lead her on the trail of a murder from the far distant past.

      "Sleeping Murder" was written during World War II and - along with the more explicitly-final Poirot novel "Curtain" - placed in a bank vault, to be opened only when Christie was either deceased, or too old to write any more. As a result, the various recurring characters in Jane Marple's life don't really seem to have aged properly, and it seems best to treat this as a flashback, rather than - as the book's subtitle would inform us - "Miss Marple's Last Case".

      This book is quite middle-of-the-line but has a lot going for it: the central character, for instance, is intriguing, and fairly haunted by the things she discovers. For some reason, Marple novels always work better when she has a sidekick of sorts, although here you could really call Marple the sidekick, as Gwenda does a good deal of the investigation. Also, when Christie wrote this in the early '40s, she must have been enticed by the idea of the retrospective novel: many of her later efforts - often brilliant, often not - would tackle long-dead murders.

      On the downside, there aren't all that many suspects and - unlike later efforts, such as "Five Little Pigs" - the 18-year-old murder remains firmly in the past, affecting the present only through the fear of retribution, never through a human element. It's an interesting-enough read, at the end of the day, but the "cold case" feels very cold, and Miss Marple herself really could have slept through this one. (Incidentally, it's one of the poorer efforts from the Hickson adaptation series - not through any fault of its own, but simply that it adapts the novel quite literally: an incredibly languid story in which Marple herself makes a few cameos.)

      Marple ranking: 7th out of 14
    • 5/5
      A classic Christie novel, well voiced over, a delightful listen.
    • 2/5
      For some reason, this creeped me out a bit. I guess it's how twisted the murderer is, and yet all along you/the main characters rely on his testimony... I did see it coming, rather, but something about his character really got to me. Ugh.

      That, plus the fact that I called it after about one hundred pages, means I didn't enjoy this book so much. There wasn't anything especially distinguishing and fun about the characters or the setting that made it extra interesting.
    • 5/5
      Stephanie Cole brings this murder mystery to life in the most wonderful, evocative way. Absolutely recommended.
    • 5/5
      Well done. Though my suspicion was found to be correct, the path to the conclusion was very interesting.
    • 5/5
      Another fantastic story from the “Miss Marple” series. Intricate plot that did not show in the movie version of the story. If you read The Duchess of Malfi you might guess who the guilty party is, otherwise, Mrs. Christie will lead you through winding paths to the grand and surprising finale. For some reason (Joan Hickson, perhaps?) I always thought Jane Marple was short, but the description of her shows a different sort of lady: “Miss Marple was an attractive old lady, tall and thin, with pink cheeks and blue eyes, and a gentle, rather fussy manner.” This comment by her nephew, Raymond West, will certainly puzzle the ones unacquainted with Victorian sensibilities: “All her dressing tables have their legs swathed in chintz.” I always enjoy Mrs. Christie’s little darts at the “grand” of the world, like in this instance, when Gwenda meets Dr. Penrose and considers that “perhaps psychiatrists always looked a little mad.” Agreed! Enjoyable too are Miss Marple’s witticisms, such as “Gentlemen always seem to be able to tabulate things so clearly.” Christie wrote this book during World War so II it portrays a younger Jane Marple; this being the last she wrote about Marple, not the last chronologically. It is a highly enjoyable book and I recommend it for Christie’s fans.
    • 4/5
      One of her best - newlyweds Giles and Gwenda move to Britain from NZ and coincidentally buy the house that Gwenda had lived in as a young child, the house from which her young stepmother had disappeared eighteen years earlier. Gwenda, alarmingly, begins to remember more about that time, and fortunately Miss Marple gets involved. The more they uncover, the more things begin to get dangerous. Re-read this not long after reading Professor Monckton-Smith's book "In Control" about coercive control and how it leads to murder and there are parallels in this much earlier fictional work..
    • 4/5
      In this short Miss Marple mystery, a young couple purchased a home. It invokes a memory in the young woman of a strangled woman named Helen. After meeting Miss Marple who encourages the woman to write to someone who may know if she'd ever lived in England, she finds the woman she saw was probably her stepmother. However, no one ever suspected the woman dead. The story told at the time was the woman ran off. Untangling eighteen years of lies, the couple, with the help of Miss Marple, find the truth. I knew from the moment we first met the guilty party who it was, but it was still a fun romp with Miss Marple via a Full Cast BBC production audiobook.
    • 3/5
      Once it seems likely there has been a murder the really interesting portion of the book is over, since the murderer should be obvious.
    • 3/5
      An interesting and easy read. I'd missed the mark when I guessed who did it, but that just made the explanation of why and how more interesting.
    • 4/5
      Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie, the final Miss Marple mystery, was published posthumously in 1976, although she had written it years earlier during the Second World War. As a new bride comes to England ahead of her husband and purchases a house in which to start their life together, she starts having flashbacks about a murder. It turns out that she had lived in that very house as a very young child and may have been an eyewitness to the murder of her step-mother. Miss Marple, a family friend, although fearful of stirring up the past, does help the young couple as they investigate and, just as Miss Marple thought, the murderer is still very much in the picture and has no intention of allowing his crimes to be exposed.

      I thoroughly enjoyed Sleeping Murder. Miss Marple was shrewd yet compassionate and the newly weds were very likeable and sympathetic characters. Agatha Christie certainly knew how to put masterful puzzles together and then slowly allow the pieces to fall into place. With a few red herrings scattered about the sharp instincts of Miss Marple are called into play and she doesn’t disappoint.

      I was a little concerned about this being touted as Miss Marple’s “last case”, but Sleeping Murder was a clever, well-written story with no hint of finality aimed at Jane Marple. Once again I was both charmed and satisfied by an Agatha Christie mystery.
    • 3/5
      Picked this up for $1.00 at the Agoura library book sale (every Saturday, downstairs).

      5/7 Predictable and not one of her best, but still a pleasant read.
    • 5/5
      When I picked this up to read, I noticed it was billed as Miss Marple's "last case." However, it was not due to Marple's death, but rather the author's. It doesnt read as a finale, but being one if her last novels it does showcase how accomplished she had become at her craft.

      Recently married Gwenda is searching for a new home when she falls in love with Hillside. Once she's moved in, she begins to worry when she finds herself knowing things she shouldn't - such as the design of a wallpaper hidden behind a shelf. It's Miss Marple who zeroes in on the likeliest answer. Gwenda had lived in the house as a child! But her memory of a strangled women at the base of the stairs leaves her and her husband determined to learn the truth. Miss Marple advises them to let "sleeping murder" lie, but they are compelled to unravel the mystery. Yet, someone doesn't want them to learn what really happened to Helen.

      This was an excellent mystery with multiple viable suspects, and an exciting ending. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      The first Agatha Christie that I read (inspired me to read many others). A great story, one of her best.
    • 4/5
      Thinking Retroactively
      Miss Jane Marple has many talents. In this case she shows a capacity to reflect and reconstruct acts retroactively. The plot is interesting. One has to think carefully to discover the murder. Agatha tells the story in a direct manner. Miss Marple comes in the scene in a politely way and gains the confidence of the persons involved. A good reading that shows some of Miss Marple's techniques.
    • 4/5
      This is one of my favorite Miss Marples and Rosemary Leach did a fine narration. Having read this several times before, I was able to appreciate how skillfully Christie gives you all the clues while misdirecting you! Only one place was there a slight flavor of 'cheating' when the narrative jumps in time from Kennedy with the Reeds to Lily's murder and back, implying that the murder happened simultaneously with the tea.
    • 3/5
      Her words held all the pointed innuendo that elderly ladies are able to achieve with the minimum of actual statement.

      I had low expectations for this one. Nemesis broke me. Nemesis was the book that obliterated any regards I may have harboured for Miss Marple.
      It seems, however, that Sleeping Murder was written well before Nemesis, even if it was published last in the series, and that the Miss Marple of Sleeping Murder is not as annoying as her older self, yet.
      As becomes clear at the end of this book, the Miss Marple in Sleeping Murder still has some spring in her step.

      Yet, as far as Dame Agatha's books are concerned, this one is not her finest. There is a lot of repetition in the discussion of the mystery and the repetition makes it easy to predict the murderer fairly early on.

      All in all, there isn't really anything about the story or the book that stands out but it is a light and quick read for the Christie completist.
    • 5/5
      Quite by accident I picked up this one at a book fair. At the same time I started reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles - The very first published Agatha Christie and this one which was her last published book. It was interesting to read them concurrently as there were about 45 years and dozens of books in between. Sleeping Murder was definitely easier to read - I just felt the story flowed easier and the description was shorter without losing any descriptive power. But having said that I enjoyed the Mysterious Affair as well - it just wasn't quite as smooth.
    • 5/5
      I remember this being amongst my favorite Agatha Christie novels when I read it in high school..way back in the 1980s.
    • 4/5
      Newlyweds Gwen and Giles Reed purchase a home in England; so much about their new house seems familiar to Gwen: the wallpaper, a hidden door, the view from the nursery. Gwen has a feeling she has been here before and may have witnessed the murder of a strange woman. With the help of their savvy friend Miss Jane Marple the Reeds unravel a dangerous mystery. This mystery is typical Agatha Christie with lots of characters, twists and turns. Sleeping Murder, the final mystery solved by Jane Marple, was published posthumously.
    • 3/5
      With a premise similar to that of Five Little Pigs or Nemesis - the investigation into a murder that's decades old - I would have expected a better novel. It wasn't abysmal but then again nothing stood out either. The characters are forgettable and flat and Christie should have made the house it's set in more atmospheric, I never really got a feel of the place and yet she does atmosphere so well when she wants to. Shame. Really should have ended the Marple novels with Nemesis, which is such a strong book. Still an entertaining read.
    • 4/5
      In the beginning, a personal anecdote:

      As a child, I was troubled intermittently by a nightmare. I am walking around the compound of my maternal grandfather's ancestral home, when I reach a dilapidated building in a secluded corner. I open it and enter, even though my better sense counsels against it. Inside, it is a prayer room dedicated to evil gods. Their pictures are hung all over the walls, and their ugly idols leer up at me. Also, the place is full of the images of the tortured victims of these deities, their silent screams, mutilated bodies and blood.

      I wake up in a cold sweat.

      The mystery of this dream was solved later. It was only a poster of       Naraka (the Indian hell) which I saw as a child, in that house, which left a lasting impression on me.

      I will not dwell on the Freudian aspects of this incident: just point out the fact that childhood traumas, however trivial, have lasting impacts. I speak from personal experience.

      Onward with the review.

      What if one has witnessed a murder as a toddler? What if one's childhood psyche had repressed that incident, until it came back to haunt one as a distorted vision in one's beautiful new home which one suddenly realises is none other than the venue of that Sleeping Murder?

      One would go mad...that is what nearly happened to Gwen. Fortunately, she had Miss Marple to help.

      Gwenda and Giles Reed return to England from New Zealand. She has no memories; as far as she knows, she has never been in England. However, buying the dream home she had set her eyes on, Gwen begins to be troubled by memories, which she thinks are from another life. She runs away to London to escape. However, watching a performance of the Duchess of Malfi, and hearing the words “cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young” brings a terrifying image into her mind… the blue strangled face of a beautiful young girl, and she herself watching it through the bannisters… and the monkey’s paws…

      Gwen is convinced that she is mad. But thankfully, she had chosen to stay with Raymond West, who most fortuitously had his Aunt Jane Marple on the premises. The old lady is not ready to go for a supernatural explanation. She has a much more prosaic one: Gwen has actually seen somebody murdered in the same house, where she has stayed as a child – a memory which has been suppressed.

      The young lady and her husband soon find out that Miss Marple had hit the nail on the head. Gwen had stayed in the house as a little child, along with her father and her flighty stepmother Helen, who had disappeared, presumably run away with one of her many young men. However, Gwen’s father was convinced that he murdered her, and ultimately was committed and died in an asylum. But it is now possible that he may not have been mad – that Helen was actually murdered (though not by him). However, the tantalising question arises… if she was murdered, who is the killer?

      Thus begins a murder investigation into the past by the young couple, against the counsel of Miss Marple to “leave sleeping murder lie”. Once she is convinced that they will not let go, Miss Marple agrees to join them, if only to keep them safe.

      And thus begins a rollercoaster ride, one of Christie’s most suspenseful novels.

      ***

      As a mystery, Sleeping Murder is rather predictable. There was no “aha!” moment at the end, because I already had a good idea who the murderer was. But I give the novel four stars for its structure and breakneck pace, rather like a Hitchcock movie… and also for the personal experience I quoted at the beginning. I could sympathise with Gwenda.
    • 5/5
      Miss Marple appears scantily in this particular story. Here, the murder dominates the scene. I've noticed that the murders that Agatha Christie places in the relative past, that is prior to the current investigation, well these murders always have the bodies tumbled out of the cupboard. Books of Agatha Christie that use this device appeal to me, and also to many others, judging by the several mysteries where the author uses this trick.

      It is a trick after all, a very solid gimmick that engenders macabre feelings like there was no tomorrow. I scarcely noticed that Miss Marple was not being her usual self, she didn't draw too much parallel with human psychology when explaining her thoughts at the end. In fact there's little proof that Miss Marple knew with certainty of the murderer's identity. There's no proof of the doctor's crime even. Thankfully it's not one of those stories where the frail Miss Marple derails the mind of a hardened serial killer, with cheap tricks, like in "A Murder Is Announced" for example.

      So yeah I solved this case. However, the case was very deceiving and I was up against a palpable wall of fog. There was not much to latch onto. There is no slow start to this book, which was one of the reasons for the five stars I gave it. I was completely baffled by the events leading to the bewilderment of one Gwenda Reed. Along with the sense of evil there's a forbidding atmosphere and a hint of regret and a pining at the waste of life.

      There were two things that put me on the right track. First the action of cutting that tennis net to shreds. Secondly, the murderer is mostly the one who is able to influence the case and distort facts to his advantage. I didn't pick on the wound that Helen got on her foot. I only knew that the doctor didn't have a brain teaser of an alibi.

      I absolutely loved the quote from the Duchess of Malfi. The quote, which I can't paste because it's too much of a bother to go look for it in my ebook, defines the galling evilness of the crime. It also gave away the fact that the murderer was insane to a degree. I would have wanted for Miss Marple to rant against the wicked nature of the crime, but she was surprisingly passive in this book. If I remember correctly there was one moment where her eyes expressed anger but that was in the middle of the book and at that time she wasn't sure of the solution to the murder.

      Another reason for liking this book so much is the vivid depiction of the characters. Among all the pure and innocent characters that Agatha Christie has thrust upon our readership, the young Reed couple was one the most believable. It's very difficult to make decent, innocent characters come to life. The author presents Gwenda and her husband in their non British simplicity. They are so pure that the finicky English countryside people warm up to them with no trouble. It's unclear whether the main protagonists had a New Zealand accent and how strong it was. But the Reed couple were life like and they hid the fact that they were cogs in the story which I enjoyed very much.

      This is, I regret, already the last Marple book that was unread uptil now. The book called Nemesis had a similar strong presence of evil and a murder set in the past, with a close person as the murderer. Miss Marple books are as fine as Alice In Wonderland or Sherlock Holmes stories. They are the finest simple sustenance that the English literature can impart to the young and not so young. They are to be cherished.
    • 4/5
      This is an interesting Christie book. She deals with young married love, brotherly love, disappointed love destructive obsessive love and unrequited love. Best of all the kind of love she describes love like that of Miss Marple who has a great love of her fellow man; who when she sees a young couple headed for heartbreak as well as danger puts herself up as a guardian angel.

      The plot is well described by other reviewers so I won't go into that. What amazed me was that when this was adapted for the storyline, the relationships and basic plot were changed by the powers that be. I am glad I read the book, because it does round out Jane Marple.

    • 3/5
      Hmmm, I dunno, the whodunit thing kept me mildly interested while I was reading it, but I can't help but think there's a certain jot or tittle of camp in the way people enjoy this stuff. Maybe if I'd come to it already loving the old lady. I mean, it was stylish, from time to time--I liked the quotation from The Duchess of Malfi as a central plot point--but the class attitudes on display seemed fairly archaic for the '30s. And as far as whodunit, is the formula just sketch us a bunch of likely rogues and then it's always the least likely one from that delimited field? I haven't read a tonne of these books but it seems like the twist is always it's the least likely one and if so that's hardly a twist at all.