Jack Heath's Reviews > A Pocket Full of Rye

4 Stars. Just a touch from the top of Christie's Miss Marple oeuvre. I was wondering why. Perhaps it's because most of the members of the household in which the dastardly deeds take place are not sympathetic characters. Or perhaps it's because Miss Marple visits only fleetingly. A leading financier, Rex Fortescue, is at his office one morning and suddenly collapses. His is a painful death which is over mercifully soon. When his pockets are turned out, one is found full of rye grain! The poison is taxine from the berries of the common yew tree. But who's the culprit? Collectively we flounder as clues are checked by Inspector Neele. It is not until after the death of Gladys Martin, a young, impressionable maid in the household, she had worked previously for Miss Marple, that our heroine shows up and recites the old nursery rhyme. "Sing a song of sixpence, a pocketful of rye, four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie." There may be a connection she says. Does it relate to the old Blackbird Mine in west Africa? And the possible theft of it by Mr. Fortescue from the MacKenzie family so many years ago? Is that it? Or something else? The ending's a good one. (Oc2020/De2023)