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"In fact the entire family are most unpleasant people."
One of my favourite Christie books, adapted into one of my favourite 'Miss Marple' stories.
This is part of the classic BBC series starring Joan Hickson as Miss Marple (Christie herself described Hickson as THE Miss Marple), ignore the recent dreadful UTV 'Marple' series which changes everything about the books. The Joan Hickson series had period details, good acting, good casting, were faithful to the books and had pretty opening credits that were nicely ominous.
'A Pocketful Of Rye' begins with the death of family patriarch Rex (Timothy West) who keels over dead at the office after being poisoned. DI Neele and the tasty looking DS Hay (Jon Glover) head off to Rex's home Yew Tree Lodge to find out whodunit. They find an abundance of suspects:
Neele and Hay zero in on Adele as their prime suspect until someone poisons her too, then Gladys the maid is also murdered and Miss Marple is drawn into the case. It seems someone has killed three people to tie in to the nursery rhyme: 'Sing a song of Sixpence, a pocketful of Rye'. Miss Marple and her fussy ways takes over the investigation and points out to the befuddled Neele and Hay the identity of the murderer.
This was goodish. Even if some parts of the book were cut for time (the Blackbird mine, the feud that involved Rex and the detailed explanation of just how all the murders occurred), good stuff remains: Adele and Jennifer's friendship, the family wars even if the revelation of the killer varies just slightly from the book.
Recommended.
P-Con VI March 27th/28th/29th 2009
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