A true Agatha Christie classic. Miss Marple makes her last appearance in 'Sleeping Murder', an intriguing mystery as to whether or not Gwenda's stepmother was in fact murdered, and if so, who did it. After buying her childhood home, she has flashbacks to seeing stepmom Helen lying dead, her killer hovering over the body. Gwen and husband Giles team up with friend Jane Marple to uncover clues to the crime that happened years earlier.

This is one of my favorite Miss Marple mysteries. Unlike so many Agatha Christie novels, where a series of characters is introduced at the beginning, this starts out with Gwenda disembarking in Plymouth off a ship from New Zealand and looking in the South of England for a home for herself and her new husband, who will join her at a later date. It is quite romantic for Agatha Christie, and the unfolding of the story is very well done, especially the first part of the book. She falls in love with a house that feels "familiar." She can't understand why... If you like A.C., in particular her Miss Marple series (I personally prefer the Poirot books by and large), this is unlikely to disappoint.

This is a cracking good Agatha Christie Miss Marple mystery. The plot of Miss Marple's helping to solve a mystery that is many years old and hinges on a young women's long-suppressed childhood memories is different and surprisingly believable. It kept me guessing right up til the end. Vocal characterizations are good, this is one mystery that will not disappoint fans of Dame Agatha.

The plot of Sleeping Murder revolves around New Zealander Gwenda and Englishman Giles, a young, newly-married couple. While Giles is traveling on business, Gwenda is charged with finding a house in the English countryside for the pair. She jaunts through the country on the errand, enjoying being a tourist as well as a house hunter. (She has never visited England before.) Gwenda finds a charming Victorian villa where she immediately feels at home, purchases it, and begins to decorate and renovate it in preparation for Giles' arrival.

Then the odd things start to happen. She asks the gardener to move some steps from one place to another. Upon beginning the work, the gardener discovers that the new location for the steps was actually original to the house. She requests that a door be cut from one room to another. The workmen begin to carry out her wishes, and they find that, once upon a time, there WAS a door there, exactly where Gwenda pointed out. As these types of "coincidences" accrue, Gwenda feels sure that something is amiss. Is the house haunted, perhaps? Then, she has a frightening vision of the body of a young woman at the foot of the steps in her new home, strangled.

As the mystery begins to unravel, who should happen upon the scene but our dear Miss Marple? Naturally, she lends clarity and caution to the proceedings, and before long, our young couple is in the thick of a decades-old murder investigation.

I love reading Agatha Christie mysteries! They are such fun, and I never see the RIGHT ending coming. (Red herrings everywhere, which is what makes them so tricky to figure out.) Plus, they give me a hankering for scones (Miss Marple and her compatriots are always talking things out over tea.) which I am only to happy to satisfy.

What improvements have been made for the "Miss Marple's Last Case" edition? There are already major differences in punctuation, word choices, and scene breaks between the original Collins and Dodd Mead editions of this novel. There are further differences between the Dodd Mead editions republished by Random House/Avenel and the Dodd Mead editions republished by Simon & Shuster/Pocket. There are further additions still in the Signet, Berkley, and Black Dog & Leventhal editions. For every publishing house putting out her works, there seem to be a new batch of editors altering Agatha Christie's words and the sound of her voice. What's the matter with these publishers? Whose voice do they think we want to hear when we sit down to a novel by Agatha Christie? And what will she sound like twenty years from now? It's frightening that her estate has failed to see the importance of guarding her words as she wrote them. Please tell me I'm not the only one here who senses that a crime has been committed.