A furtive and bizarre murder in the vicarage of the quaint English town of St. Mary Mead has the authorities baffled. The victim is the disagreeable Colonel Protheroe, who is universally disliked.

"Anyone who murdered Colonel Protheroe," declares the the vicar, in whose study the colonel is found dead, "would be doing the world at large a favour!"

Many others in the village have said that they would like to see the colonel dead, but a number of people have a more specific interest in his death: the colonel's young wife, Anne; her lover, the artist Lawrence Redding; Archer, a local man given a harsh sentence by the colonel for poaching. Even the colonel's daughter, Lettice, desperate for money, says, "If only father would be decent and die, I'd be all right."

These complexities lead to any number of dead ends for local investigators. The only one able to see through the many blinds and obscurities is Miss Marple, an elderly but sharp-eyed spinster.

In this, the first of sixteen Miss Marple novels and numerous short stories, Agatha Christie takes us through a maze of false leads and erroneous suppositions before the mystery is solved.

Miss Jane Marple was introduced in a series of short stories that began publication in December 1927 and subsequently collected under the title The Thirteen Problems.

The Murder at the Vicarage, first published in 1930, is one of Christie's most popular books, displaying her genius as a master and innovator of the mystery genre.

Christie's books have sold a billion copies in English and another billion in translations. She has been ranked as the most translated of all individual authors. Her play The Mouse Trap has been performed almost continuously in London's West End since 1952.

Agatha Christie was born in Devonshire, England, in 1890, to an upper-middle-class family. Married twice, she had one daughter. For her achievements as a novelist, in 1971 she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). She died in 1976.