A Pocket Full of Rye (Paperback)

The first chapter described the death of Rex Fortescue in great detail, although those details curtail none of the man's suffering but his assistants worries: whether their boss is having a sudden attack of epilepsy, drunk, or simply dying. I find this chapter very funny - I have a very strange sense of humour, so sue me - and sets the motion for the proceeding chapters when more of the rhyme came into fulfilment: the dead queen in the parlour, the maid with a clothespin on her nose to make up for the 'bird came and nipped her nose' and even the pie that contained dead blackbirds, which of course, accounts for the first part of the rhyme.

Ms Marple commented these things in the book as horribly childish, and she set out to seek the murderer who not only killed from afar but also killed merely out of covering his/her own sad behind. Another brilliant novel from the Dame.

Rex Fortescue was a very rich and quite unpleasant man. He ran his family and his business with an iron fist. One morning his very efficient secretary took in his morning tea and found him dying. While investigating his death the police were met with one puzzle after another, what killed Mr. Fortescue?, how was it administered? and why did he have a pocket full of rye grain? As they were beginning to get some answers another murder occurred and then yet another each bringing more confusion to the scene.

Jane Marple arrives to the house and begins to sort through the tangle of clues to steer the police in the right direction.

This story may seem quite familiar. The Fortescue family is Christie's standard - domineering, wealthy father who keeps most of his family trapped in the family home, under his control. An errant "black sheep" child returns just as the murders begin and there are many family secrets.

Although the story is somewhat formulistic it is still a well told tale and a fairly laid out puzzle. All the clues are there for the reader to use to try to solve the mystery before the last chapter. The only drawbacks for Miss Marple fans are that Miss Marple doesn't arrive nearly half way through the book and that it is not set in St. Mary Mead.

In this her 1953 offering she makes use of the nursery rhyme “Sing A Song Of Sixpence”. Appropriately it is one of her Miss Marple books. Although her elderly spinster sleuth has little to do here, and is late making her appearance, it is she who perceives and urges the significance of the nursery rhyme. “Don’t you see, it makes a pattern to all this.”

The murders occur in the disfunctional family of Rex Fortescue, a financier, and the action occurs in his London office and in the family home, Yew Tree Lodge. The opening chapters are wonderfully engaging. Agatha Christie, when she took the trouble, could sketch characters vividly. Amongst all of them in this book, there are not more than a handful of suspects. To compensate, Mrs Christie throws in buckets full of red herrings.

You’ll enjoy the puzzle, and having innumerable theories suggested and dismissed. The solution, when it comes, however, is no more plausible than is the likelihood of a blackbird pecking off a maid’s nose.