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    The Moving Finger: Level 5, B2+
    The Moving Finger: Level 5, B2+
    The Moving Finger: Level 5, B2+
    Audiobook (abridged)3 hours

    The Moving Finger: Level 5, B2+

    Written by Agatha Christie

    Narrated by John Hasler

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners.

    Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter with the language targeted at learners of English.

    Lymstock is a small town with lots of secrets. Recently several people in the town have received anonymous hate-mail. When Mrs Symmington receives one of the letters and then dies in mysterious circumstances, the people of the town no longer know whom they can trust.

    Who is writing the letters? And why? Miss Marple helps solve the mystery.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateOct 13, 2016
    ISBN9780008210465
    The Moving Finger: Level 5, B2+
    Author

    Agatha Christie

    Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.

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    Reviews for The Moving Finger

    3.5/5

    890 ratings40 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Written and set in WWII, this is hardly as Miss Marple book at all, since the genteel lady detective only appears towards the end to draw the threads together and solve the real crime which has taken place in the stereotypical village amidst a flood of poison pen letters. Peopled with a rich set of characters, the book is narrated by one of the characters and is interesting mainly from a sociological point of view rather than a criminal one. Throw in a little romance (or two), and this is a pleasant read for a journey or a wet afternoon. Working out whodunit hardly seems important. A few times the quite severe view Christie took of people slips out from the gentility.
    • 3/5
      with all the adaptations going around, it's sometimes hard to remember if you've actually read the book or not

      This is a Miss Marple story, though she does turn up late and is hardly in the story at all.

      This is a story of Burton (and his sister) taking a house in the coutry after his flying accident. Soon they have received a poison pen letter accusing them of not being brother and sister, and not long after this people start dying. Burton has most of it worked out, even if he doesnt realise it, before Miss Marple arrives and ties everything up into a neat bow.

      Once again, a short neat little story and a quick read to while away an afternoon or two
    • 5/5
      A series of poison letters leads to a death but was it really a suicide? A 2nd body is found that raises suspicions. Only Miss Marple's questions not only leads to the poison pen writer but also the real killer. But it takes the courage of a young woman to bring the murderer out into the open.
    • 2/5
      This book was recommended by a friend, and happened to be the first Agatha Christie mystery I ever read. Hoping to get a sense of Miss Marple, a character I always heard about, I was disappointed that she didn't appear on the scene until the last quarter of the book, and she played a minor role at that. Just not my cup of tea.
    • 5/5
      I'm reading this again for a group discussion, and at the same time I'm looking for new insights, things I haven't taken notice of before. Here are a few things to consider In this novel Agatha Christie reverts to the use of a narrator, and we need to ask ourselves how reliable he is. Does the fact that the narrator is male skew the perspective for the reader? Do other things cloud his judgement? The novel is well underway (over 60% according to Kindle) by the time Miss Marple is called in by the Vicar's wife, after two murders have already taken place: I’m going to call in an expert. .... I don’t mean someone who knows about anonymous letters or even about murder. I mean someone who knows people. The Dane Calthrops had a guest staying with them, an amiable elderly lady who was knitting something with white fleecy wool. We had very good hot scones for tea, the vicar came in, and beamed placidly on us whilst he pursued his gentle erudite conversation. It was very pleasant. I don’t mean that we got away from the topic of the murder, because we didn’t. Miss Marple, the guest, was naturally thrilled by the subject. As she said apologetically: ‘We have so little to talk about in the country!’ She had made up her mind that the dead girl must have been just like her Edith. Miss Marple lays a trap for the murderer just as she did in THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY Miss Marple attributes her understanding of what has happened to her life-long observation of village life. One sees a good deal of human nature living in a village all the year round,’ said Miss Marple placidly. Then, seeming to feel it was expected of her, she laid down her crochet, and delivered a gentle old-maidish dissertation on murder. ‘The great thing is in these cases to keep an absolutely open mind. Most crimes, you see, are so absurdly simple. This one was. Quite sane and straightforward—and quite understandable—in an unpleasant way, of course.’ “No smoke without fire.” It irritated you, but you proceeded quite correctly to label it for what it was—a smoke screen. Misdirection, you see—everybody looking at the wrong thing— And of course Miss Marple engages in a little misdirection herself. When Jerry Burton and the police think the murderer has been found, the wrong person is accused. And then finally there is a bit of romance, just as there was in MURDER AT THE VICARAGE, and THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY. And the motive for the murders? well, that would be telling.
    • 3/5
      Slightly creepy entry (but maybe because I was listening to an old radio play rather than reading the novel). Miss Marple gets up to speed with a village gossiping about a suicide perhaps caused by a flurry of poison pen letters. A wounded airman becomes interested in a young woman who dresses like a child (rather unsettling for contemporary ears).But an interesting puzzle that beat me.
    • 4/5
      Fairly standard Agatha Christie. An easy read, plot twists and turns, and lots of red herrings. Although this is a reread, i didn't remember it from roughly 30 years ago, but still pegged the villain by assuming the red herrings were red herrings and looking for the most likely other candidate. Decent story, nice way to kill a few hours, good follower to lots of serious tomes I've been reading.
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this story. Even though Miss Marple was not present during the whole story I quite enjoyed the other characters. The Moving Finger is a mystery of who is writing these anonymous letters to the residents of a quiet little town called Lymstock and who murdered the maid. I enjoyed the interaction of the out of town guests on holiday Jerry and Joanna Burton, brother and sister.
    • 2/5
      Jerry is sent to the countryside on doctor's orders after a flight accident. He arrives there with his sister for the rest and relaxation, but they quickly find a drama unfolding in the town. Someone is anonymously sending letters to people throughout the village accusing them of uncouth acts (e.g., cheating on a spouse). Things quickly escalate and soon the town is investigating murder.This has to be my least favorite of the Miss Marple series by Christie. For starters, I kept doubting myself as to whether I had gotten the wrong book, as Miss Marple doesn't show up until two-thirds of the way into the book! Even then, she is so few scenes, it's easy to forget about her. (Although, of course, she does end up unmasking the killer.) So much of the book is caught up in mundane descriptions of village life (e.g, how the town is laid out) before the action begins. I really did not care for any of the characters, least of all our narrator Jerry. In fact, Jerry skeeved me out quite a bit with his sudden romantic interest in Megan; although Megan is 20 years old, she is frequently referred to by everyone in town including Jerry himself as a "child." Jerry's own sister says he is only interested in Megan because he wants a "dog" to "lead about on its leash." In fact, the book seems to have rather negative views about women in general, with mentions of how hysterical, jealous, etc. women can be.The mystery itself was really not all that intriguing and its denouement was rather anticlimatic. Christie did manage to present a person I hadn't suspected as the murderer, but the rather mundane husband-kills-wife-so-he-can-be-with-another-woman reveal is much more tame than the scenario I was playing out in my head. Oh well. I suppose not every mystery can be a winner. After this doozy following on the heels of a previous 'eh' Miss Marple mystery, I'm not sure if I'm going to continue on with the series.
    • 3/5
      I’ve been working through all of Christie’s Miss Marple novels, going out of order until I had them all purchased. I’ve read five now, and this was the first one to really disappoint. Miss Marple may as well have not even appeared and there is very little mystery until more than half way through.Jerry Burton and his sister, Joanna, travel to Lymstock so that he can rest and recover after a bad accident. The sleepy little town is unnerved by anonymous letters being delivered to residents accusing them of various unsavory things. The letters turn deadly, however, when Mrs. Symmington commits suicide after receiving one. The police are called in to find the writer, helped by Jerry who has been getting to know all the residents, especially the young and naïve Megan - daughter of Mrs. Symmington. My problem was that the entire first half of the book was really nothing more than gossip, with the occasional reference to the letters. Jerry, with or without Joanna, visits every resident, multiple times, to chat and/or have tea. I was hoping for Peyton Place-like shenanigans, but it was just boring. Even when a person turns up outright murdered, I just didn't care (nor did most of the residents). Miss Marple doesn’t even enter the story until more than two thirds of the way through, and the way she “solves” the case is completely unsatisfying. She doesn’t “observe” and collect clues, or interview people, like in other mysteries. She has a conversation with Jerry, who tells her everything that has occurred, and she just knows who the writer is.The ending, and ultimate culprit, was a surprise (probably because we never really learn anything to point to any particular suspect), which is why I gave it 3 stars. Disappointing, but not enough to put me off reading more.
    • 4/5
      Vies with Sleeping Murder for the title of my favourite Aggie! Great love story with a murder thrown in. Re read after a half-way decent adaptation shown on TV (most of the TV adaptations are so heavily adapted they may as well be new stories!).
    • 4/5
      Miss Marple Win It All!This story is a little bit different when confronted with other Marple mysteries. Miss Marple and her incomparable wisdom appear late in the plot. With that said, one will experience another well designed puzzle with a lot of good ingredients: anonymous letters, murder, a lot of gossip, even romance. A well written tale presented in the first person by its main character.
    • 3/5
      3.5*
      I am slowly rereading the Miss Marple books this year. This 3rd one barely qualifies as a Miss Marple as she doesn't make an appearance until about 80% of the way through. Of course, she quickly solves the case once she appears on the scene! It is almost as if Christie's publisher talked her into adding in a familiar sleuth rather than making it one of her stand-alone mysteries...

      Richard E. Grant is marvelous in his narration of the audiobook. I really appreciated all the different voices he did for the different characters!
    • 5/5
      Jerry Burton soll auf ärztliche Anordnung „dem Stumpfsinn fröhnen“. Er zieht vorübergehend mit seiner Schwester Joanna in die ländliche Stadt Lymstock. Doch es bleibt nicht lange ruhig. Anonyme Briefe werden verschickt, die gespickt mit Obszönitäten und Unwahrheiten auch Jerry nicht verschonen. Niemand nimmt die Briefe wirklich ernst, bis eines Tages durch solche ein Brief getrieben, ein Selbstmord geschieht. Lymstock ist entsetzt. Wie gut, dass die Pfarrersfrau Miss Marple zu Rate zieht.Auch wenn das Buch in die Reihe der Miss Marple Geschichten eingegliedert ist, so ist doch hier Jerry der eigentliche Protagonist. Unterstrichen wird dies durch die Ich-Perspektive der Erzählung. Er schildert den Fall aus seiner Sicht und kommt der Lösung gefährlich nahe, doch fehlt ihm das Selbstvertrauen, die richtigen Schlussfolgerungen zu ziehen.Dass er in diese Stadt zieht, sieht er zunächst als eine gute Möglichkeit, Klatsch und Tratsch zu erfahren, um so seine Rückenheilung voranschreiten zulassen. Durch seine sympathische Art wird er schnell in die Gemeinde integriert. Besonders die kleine Megan hat es ihm angetan. Megan lebt mit ihrer Mutter, ihrem Stiefvater und ihren Halbbrüdern zusammen und ist eigentlich alt genug, um auf eigenen Beinen zu stehen. Doch die Ignoranz ihrer Familie ihr und ihren Bedürfnissen gegenüber, macht sie zu einem melancholischen Mädchen, das lieber noch einmal klein sein möchte. Erst die Zuneigung Jerrys lockt das doch eigentlich intelligente Mädchen aus der Reserve.Mysteriöse Briefe und die Beziehung zwischen Megan und Jerry bilden die Fixpunkte dieser Geschichte. Christie zeichnet die Hauptpersonen hier besonders persönlich und sympathisch. Man wird regelrecht in diese Erzählung hineingezogen, es bilden sich stille Hoffnungen und nicht umsonst bezeichnet die Autorin diesen Roman als einen ihrer stärksten. Und damit hat sie meiner Ansicht nach recht. Das Buch steckt voller vordergründiger und unterschwelliger Gefühle. Und dabei kommt die eigentliche Kriminalgeschichte nicht zu kurz. Doch Christie schweift hier auch einmal ab, geht neue Wege in der Charakterzeichnung und das macht diesen Roman so faszinierend.Eine sehr emotionale Kriminalgeschichte.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this story. The mystery was well-written and enjoyable. I liked these characters very much. It was fun reading about city folk" moving to the country and causing a stir. Even though this is listed as a Miss Marple mystery, she doesn't appear until the end (just in time to solve the case) and she could have been left out entirely. But, I still enjoyed the story very much."
    • 4/5
      Jerry Burton and his sister, Joanna, have temporarily located to the sleepy town of Lymstock while Jerry recuperates from injuries from a plane crash. But Lymstock is not as quiet as it appears. Shortly after their arrival Jerry and Joanna are the recipients of a nasty, anonymous letter and they're just one of the many victims in town. But when one of the recipients of a letter commits suicide, things begin to take a much darker turn.Yet another delightful mystery from Agatha Christie. Jerry is a fine narrator for the mystery, which is well-crafted of course. I once again utterly failed to determine whodunnit. Of course, Christie's fantastic dry wit still remains one of my favourite parts of her novels. This one is nominally a Miss Marple novel although she makes a very slim appearance. Still, a highly enjoyable read.
    • 3/5
      A rather enjoyable mystery book. Christie keeps you guessing exactly what is going on in it, but when you come to the end of the book you come to the realization that it all falls into place rather nicely and if you had just looked at things from a slightly different angle you would have gotten there yourself. I rather found it pleasing to read and glad I finished it. I would recommend it to those that want to be able to dissect a mystery novel as this one seems rather ease for that purpose.
    • 4/5

      Jerry Burton (a pilot recuperating) and his sister Joanna have let a house in the quiet village of Lymstock.... Soon they are victims of poison pen letters, as are most of their neighbors.

      When the mother of the odd & unwanted young Megan commits suicide and her maid is poisoned, the village is thrown into even more of a frenzy of accusations & suspicions...

      The vicar's wife, who with her acid tongue & pronouncements, is not above suspicion herself, calls in her friend Miss Marple to help solve the problems.

      Meanwhile Jerry not only takes a keen interest in Megan and is surprised find his interest to be romantic, but an even keener interest in solving the crimes.

      When Megan decides to blackmail her stepfather (at the behest of Miss Marple) the solution of the poison pen letters & the murder is solved.

      I liked the mystery, the plot, the romance, and the twists made for good reading, but I found Miss Marple's intervention too pat.
    • 3/5
      Miss Marple doesn't come in until the last third of the book, and even at that point, she's still a secondary character.

      The foreshadowing was interesting (but didn't help me "solve" the mystery)

      I had to skip to the back and see "whodunnit" before I could finish reading.
    • 4/5
      One of the cosier Christies --some are pretty grim but this is mild. A recuperating wounded airman and his sister come to a small village which is afflicted with a spate of nasty anonymous letters. The police believe they are written by a repressed respectable lady, but this turns out not to be the case. Miss Marple appears only briefly at the end to solve the case. One of the nicer features us a budding romance between te POV character (the wounded man) ad a troubled young woman.
    • 3/5
      Not her best.
    • 3/5
      Not really a Miss Marple mystery. Marple doesn't appear until about 80% of the way through and then as a cameo role. She then appears at the end to wrap everything up. It was like she was added as an afterthought so it could be a "Miss Marple Mystery." Really, Christie could have inserted any of her sleuths and it wouldn't have made much difference.
    • 4/5
      Brother and sister Jerry and Joanna Burton have leased a house in a small English town while Jerry recuperates from a flying accident. The town's tranquility is soon disturbed by a flurry of poison pen letters making all sorts of false but scandalous accusations. What starts out as an annoyance eventually escalates to sudden death in the suicide of a letter recipient. Although the observant Jerry has noticed circumstances and anomalies that put the letter-writer's identity almost within his grasp, it takes the influence of Miss Marple to make the pieces fall together into the shape of a murderer.This is the third novel featuring Miss Marple, and to this point she could be described as a minor character who functions as a catalyst for others to solve the crimes. It seems like Christie hasn't quite decided what to do with her yet. It's one of my favorite Miss Marple novels, despite the fact that Miss Marple makes only a couple of brief appearances in it.
    • 4/5
      I loved the narrator in this. His interactions with the rest of the cast are absolutely priceless. I love that Christie excels at creating eccentric characters that serve their purpose extremely well. Joanna is quite an exuberant woman and I loved the dichotomy between her and her brother. Some really hilarious lines. The mystery is fairly conventional with a disappointingly flat ending but this is such a comfortable book to read. Marple barely makes an appearance but her scenes are efficient and to the point. Good book.
    • 2/5
      This one was a disappointment. The earliest Miss Marple stories don't seem as good as the later ones, except-till now- 'The Body In The Library', which is very complex. I knew this should be a Miss Marple mystery but she doesn't appear throughout most of the book. For another thing, the story takes place in the village of Lymstock, so I kept wondering how Marple was to be brought into the picture. For a few moments I had thought that there must have been a mistake as there wasn't enough scope for Miss Marple to appear and shine.Apart from that the denouement of the mystery itself is a disappointment. The old habit of setting up the spouse as the engineer of all the evil in the book-including the murders-is vintage Agatha Christie. But here the mystery is not as intriguing and not as impossible as her finer work. One of the lesser tricks employed in the story was to make the reader believe that the guilty must be a woman; an embittered woman who may or may not be a lady. But that didn't wash with me. There were not many false clues lying about, as the story was told from the perspective of Jerry Burton.Jerry Burton marries Megan Symmington. His sister Joanna marries Owen Griffth. I kept up with this book better whenever Megan was being described...what she wore, how she had a horse face...how childish her words were, how, when she cried, she rather bawled. She was crucial to my enjoyment of the book. To be honest the two way love between Jerry and Megan flares up rather suddenly. Near up to where Jerry falls for Megan, she was being described by Jerry as a sad dog who now was glad for having been taken for a walk! I haven't met someone like Megan in my life but I'm certain Dame Agatha Christie has. Any waning interest in her books rekindles because of some remarkable insight or description of hers. She must have met some of those people. She cannot have manufactured them out of thin air. That, I think, is impossible.
    • 4/5
      The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie is classed as a Miss Marple mystery, but there was very little evidence of Miss Marple in this book. She didn’t show up until page 142 out of 200 pages, then she proceeded to knit a few rows while solving the identity of the anonymous letter writing murderer.Other than the lack of Miss Marple, I quite liked this book. Set in a seemingly quiet, placid country village, the obscene poison pen letters spared no one and did not hesitate to accuse each recipient of shocking activities. Even with no spark of truth in them these letters caused people to look at one another in a different way and suddenly everyone was under suspicion and accusations were being bandied about. It wasn’t long before suicide and murder followed.With Jane Marple being an almost afterthought, the focus of the book is on Jerry Burton and his sister Joanna, who have come to the village while Jerry recovers from a flying accident. These two are total misfits in the rural village but were two characters that I found very sympathetic and I enjoyed seeing the events unfold through Jerry’s eyes. While The Moving Finger is not destined to be one of my favorite Miss Marple mysteries, it is still going to be considered a very good Agatha Christie mystery.
    • 4/5
      Murder mysteries aren't usually this charming. That's what's so good about Agatha Christie. The Moving Finger is Marple-lite. The mystery is so small-town - nasty letters are going around and no one knows who sent them. In true Christie fashion, the villagers are paraded past as a string of suspects and the suspense lasts until close to the end. If Miss Marple had narrated, she would have seen the culprit a mile away. She does, of course, save the day. This book has more resolution than other of Christie's novels, but that just adds to the charm.
    • 4/5
      Classic Ms. Marple -- what's not to love?
    • 4/5
      Vintage Christie--ranked against her own competition of jaw-dropping books, such as And Then There Were None, this is a tad less memorable, but it still kept me guessing to the end while playing fair with the reader. Otherwise it's more than solid and has all the hallmarks of her best. There is the picture of life in a small English village in the mid-20th Century, Lymstock, which has been suffering from a series of poison pen letters culminating in murder. There's all the clues that come together in the end like clockwork, the red herrings, the plausible suspects, some of whom you favor, and others you come to care about you so hope didn't do it. There's humor, a nice element of romance, suspense--and oh, and Christie's elderly spinster detective Miss Marple. Although she mostly features at the end with the solution, not coming into the tale until Chapter Six of Eight, only a few dozen pages before the end. The story is the first person account of Jerry Burton, staying at the village with his sister while he recovers from an accident, and he's an appealing character through which to follow the tale.
    • 3/5
      Technically a Miss Marple novel, although the little old lady from St Mary Mead barely appears in this one, not even being introduced until the final third of the book. It's told from the viewpoint of Jerry Burton, a war-wounded pilot who has taken a house in the small town of Lymstock to spend a few months recuperation somewhere in the country away from his friends. His doctor's advice was to take an interest in local politics and scandal as a way of keeping his brain occupied without stressing him. Jerry and his sister Joanna get an early opportunity to do just that, when they receive a poison pen letter. when they find that they're not the first, they decide to track down the writer, almost as a game. But the game turns deadly serious when one of the recipients is found dead by poison, with a note saying "I can't go on". Jerry's continued interest in the case is welcomed by the police, for as the officer in charge of the investigation points out, as an incomer he doesn't have pre-existing biases, but as a resident he will hear things that people will be reluctant to tell the police. And so Jerry gets to see in fine detail how scandal and gossip work in a small community, with the phrase "no smoke without fire" as a running theme of village conversation.This is an excellent study of village gossip, with some fine character studies. The main disappointment is the portrayal of Miss Marple herself, who seems a curiously flat character in this book. I think I would have enjoyed it more had I known when starting it that Jerry is the primary investigative character as well as the narrator.