![]() Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition | |
Author | Agatha Christie |
---|---|
Cover artist | Kenneth Farnhill |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre | Crime novel |
Publisher | Collins Crime Club |
Publication date | November 1968 |
Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
Pages | 256 (first edition, hardcover) |
Preceded by | Endless Night |
Followed by | Hallowe'en Party |
By the Pricking of My Thumbs is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in November 1968 [1] and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. [2] [3] The UK edition retailed at twenty-one shillings (21/-) [1] and the US edition at $4.95. [3] It features her detectives Tommy and Tuppence Beresford.
Tommy and Tuppence are middle-aged in this work (they aged from novel to novel).
The title of the book comes from Act 4, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare's Macbeth , when the second witch says:
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
The novel is divided into four books.
In Book 1 Tommy and Tuppence Beresford visit Tommy’s aunt Ada in a retirement home called Sunny Ridge. While Tommy talks with his aunt, Tuppence has a conversation with another resident, Mrs Lancaster, who unexpectedly says "Was it your poor child? There behind the fireplace."
A few weeks later Aunt Ada dies of natural causes. When they return to the home after the funeral to make arrangements for Ada’s possessions, they find that Mrs Lancaster has suddenly departed. The matron tells them that a relative called Mrs Johnson took her away. Tuppence suspects there’s more to it and tries to find the relative but the trail turns cold. One of the items Aunt Ada had left is a painting of a house by a river. The picture strongly reminds Tuppence of a house she once saw and immediately liked. The painting was supposedly given to Aunt Ada by Mrs Lancaster.
In Book 2 Tommy is away for a few days, so Tuppence starts looking for the mystery house on her own. Eventually she finds it in a small village called Sutton Chancellor. It turns out that the house is divided in a peculiar way. The back part of the house is rented by a middle-aged couple called the Perrys. The front part has been vacant for years. Tuppence meets with the people of Sutton Chancellor. There is an elderly vicar, a talkative B&B landlady called Mrs Copleigh, and a Miss Bligh who seems to run the parish.
Under the pretence of house hunting, Tuppence tries to get more information about the house. Mrs. Copleigh tells her a grim story about a spate of child killings some years ago. Then Tuppence fails to return home on the arranged day, having been concussed by a blow to the head.
In Book 3 Tommy and his servant Albert are worried about Tuppence. Tommy does some investigation on his own. He discovers the painting was by an artist called Boscowan who died several years ago. Tommy meets with the doctor of Sunny Ridge. There have been some deaths that the doctor finds odd and he is worried about possible foul play. Tommy then talks to an investigator friend who hints the house in Sutton Chancellor might have been used as a safe house for a criminal gang. Tommy shows the painting to Mrs Boscowan, who notes that someone has added a boat to the picture. At home, Tommy learns that Tuppence is in a hospital near Sutton Chancellor with severe concussion. Tommy and Albert then find a hidden letter from Aunt Ada, in which she suspects there is malice in Sunny Ridge.
In Book 4 Tuppence has recovered. An old doll she found in the mysterious house turns out to contain uncut diamonds. A party is arranged in Sutton Chancellor. Sir Phillip Starke, the local landowner, and Mrs Boscowan are invited. Tuppence has the impression that Sir Phillip knows more about the whole affair. The next day Tuppence goes to the vicarage and confronts Miss Bligh, who she suspects was the one who hit her on the head.
Alone, Tuppence goes to the mystery house and to her surprise finds the missing Mrs Lancaster. She takes Tuppence to a secret part of the house and proceeds to tell her life story. She was a wild child, a dancer, who got pregnant young. After she chose to abort the baby (“I was a dancer, I didn’t want a child... the doctor said it would be all right, but it wasn’t all right”), she took up with a criminal gang; they used the house to hide their loot. Later she left that life behind and got married, hoping to have a family, but could not conceive again and in her grief and guilt over the abortion became unhinged and started killing children. "The only way to atone for the first murder was more murders— they were sacrifices, see?"
One of the other residents, Mrs Moody, in Sunny Ridge had recognised her, so she had to be silenced. Miss Bligh, posing as a relative, resettled her into a new home. After her candour, Mrs Lancaster attempts to kill Tuppence, first with poisoned milk, then with a metal blade.
Tuppence is saved just in time. It is revealed that Mrs Lancaster is actually the wife of Sir Phillip Starke. He had covered up her insanity and the crimes she committed. He was assisted in the cover-up by Miss Bligh, his former secretary and confidante. Tommy and Tuppence then return home.
The novel is dedicated "to the many readers in this and other countries who write to me asking: 'What has happened to Tommy and Tuppence? What are they doing now?'"
Francis Iles (Anthony Berkeley Cox) in The Guardian's issue of 13 December 1968 admitted that, "This is a thriller, not a detective story, and needless to say an ingenious and exciting one; but anyone can write a thriller (well, almost anyone), whereas a genuine Agatha Christie could be written by one person only." [4]
Maurice Richardson in The Observer of 17 November 1968 said, "Not her best though it has patches of her cosy euphoria and aura of the sinister." [5]
Robert Barnard said that this novel "Begins rather well, with a vicious old aunt of Tommy's in a genteel old people's home, but declines rapidly into a welter of half-realised plots and a plethora of those conversations, all too familiar in late Christie, which meander on through irrelevancies, repetitions and inconsequentialities to end nowhere (as if she had sat at the feet of Samuel Beckett).” He concluded his negative assessment of the plot by saying that it “Makes one appreciate the economy of dialogue – all point, or at least possible point, in early Christie." [6]
In 2005, the novel was adapted by the French director Pascal Thomas under the title Mon petit doigt m'a dit... [ citation needed ]
The novel was adapted into a television film in 2006 as part of the Agatha Christie's Marple series starring Geraldine McEwan even though Christie did not write Marple into the original story. The plot was altered with Tommy away on military intelligence business abroad, and Tommy's part of the story was re-written for Miss Marple. Tommy was portrayed as a self-important strong male, while Tuppence was portrayed as a maudlin alcoholic who carried a hip flask and who was resentful of her husband's success; she too was going to be signed-up by MI6 but had then not been able to fulfil this ambition as she was pregnant with their first child. Tommy and Tuppence were played by Anthony Andrews and Greta Scacchi. The time in which this adaptation is set is somewhere between the late 1940s and the early 1950s, but unclear and slightly inconsistent: a US B-17 (which left the UK soon after the war and was out of US service by 1949) overflies the village, yet US airmen wear the blue USAF uniform introduced in 1949, and there is also a 1951 Festival of Britain poster in the village shop.
Miss Jane Marple is a fictional character in Agatha Christie's crime novels and short stories. Miss Marple lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur consulting detective. Often characterized as an elderly spinster, she is one of Christie's best-known characters and has been portrayed numerous times on screen. Her first appearance was in a short story published in The Royal Magazine in December 1927, "The Tuesday Night Club", which later became the first chapter of The Thirteen Problems (1932). Her first appearance in a full-length novel was in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930, and her last appearance was in Sleeping Murder in 1976.
Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in October 1976 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed for £3.50 and the US edition for $7.95.
The Secret Adversary is the second published detective fiction novel by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in January 1922 in the United Kingdom by The Bodley Head and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company later in that same year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $1.75.
Tommy and Tuppence are two fictional detectives, recurring characters in the work of Agatha Christie. Their full names are Thomas Beresford and his wife Prudence . Tommy and Tuppence first appeared in Christie's The Secret Adversary (1922). They started out their career in search of adventure and money, and the detecting life soon proved profitable and very exciting.
N or M? is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1941 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in November of the same year. The US edition retailed $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6).
At Bertram's Hotel is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 15 November 1965 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year. The UK edition retailed at sixteen shillings (16/-) and the US edition at $4.50. It features the detective Miss Marple staying at an upmarket hotel which is at the centre of a mysterious disappearance.
The Murder at the Vicarage is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in October 1930 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence and the US edition at $2.00.
Why Didn't They Ask Evans? is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club in September 1934 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1935 under the title of The Boomerang Clue. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00.
Murder Is Easy is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in June 1939, and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in September the same year under the title Easy to Kill. Christie's Superintendent Battle has a cameo appearance at the end, but plays no part in either the solution of the mystery or the apprehension of the criminal. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6), and the US edition at $2.
A Murder Is Announced is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in June 1950 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in the same month. The UK edition sold for eight shillings and sixpence (8/6) and the US edition at $2.50.
4.50 from Paddington is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in November 1957 in the United Kingdom by Collins Crime Club. This work was published in the United States at the same time as What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!, by Dodd, Mead. The novel was published in serial form before the book was released in each nation, and under different titles. The US edition retailed at $2.95.
Cat Among the Pigeons is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 2 November 1959, and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in March 1960 with a copyright date of 1959. The UK edition retailed at twelve shillings and sixpence (12/6), and the US edition at $2.95.
Nemesis is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie (1890–1976) and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in November 1971 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at £1.50 and the US edition at $6.95. It was the last Miss Marple novel the author wrote, although Sleeping Murder was the last Miss Marple novel to be published.
Postern of Fate is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie that was first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in October 1973 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at £2.00 and the US edition at $6.95.
Partners in Crime is a short story collection by British writer Agatha Christie, first published by Dodd, Mead and Company in the US in 1929 and in the UK by William Collins, Sons on 16 September of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6). All of the stories in the collection had previously been published in magazines and feature her detectives Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, first introduced in The Secret Adversary (1922).
The Thirteen Problems is a short story collection by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by Collins Crime Club in June 1932 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1933 under the title The Tuesday Club Murders. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00. The thirteen stories feature the amateur detective Miss Marple, her nephew Raymond West, and her friend Sir Henry Clithering. They are the earliest stories Christie wrote about Miss Marple. The main setting for the frame story is the fictional village of St Mary Mead.
Three Blind Mice and Other Stories is a collection of short stories written by Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1950. The first edition retailed at $2.50.
Agatha Christie's Marple is a British ITV television programme loosely based on the books and short stories by British crime novelist Agatha Christie. The title character was played by Geraldine McEwan from the first to the third series, until her retirement from the role, and by Julia McKenzie from the fourth series onwards. Unlike the counterpart TV series Agatha Christie's Poirot, the show took many liberties with Christie’s works, most notably adding Miss Marple’s character to the adaptations of novels in which she never appeared. Following the conclusion of the sixth series, the BBC acquired the rights for the production of Agatha Christie adaptations, suggesting that ITV would be unable to make a seventh series of Marple.
Miss Marple, titled Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in the series, is a British television series based on the Miss Marple murder mystery novels by Agatha Christie, starring Joan Hickson in the title role. It aired from 26 December 1984 to 27 December 1992 on BBC1. All twelve original Miss Marple novels by Christie were dramatised.
In Agatha Christie's mystery novels, several characters cross over different sagas, creating a fictional universe in which most of her stories are set. This article has one table to summarize the novels with characters who occur in other Christie novels; the table is titled Crossovers by Christie. There is brief mention of characters crossing over in adaptations of the novels. Her publications, both novels and short stories, are then listed by main detective, in order of publication. Some stories or novels authorised by the estate of Agatha Christie, using the characters she created, and written long after Agatha Christie died, are included in the lists.