Why a Booktrail?
Mid 1900s: Crime comes once again to the home village of Miss Marple. Glamour comes to the village but death is not far behind…
The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side (Miss Marple)
What you need to know before your trail
Murder returns to St Mary Mead when a film star moves into the village – into Gossington Hall no less. Marina Gregg has moved glamour into the village it would seem and is intent of making this her home. She decides to make friends and opens up her grand house for a local fete. Many people attend, some of them have just come for a nosy around of course, but the gesture does not go unnoticed. That is, until local girl Heather Babcock is poisoned. She has come to the house as a guest so could Marina have been the real target?
Miss Marple realises that the startled expression on the dead girl may be a clue that she had seen something quite awful just before she died Miss Marple and her investigations into human nature start with earnest…
Travel Guide
St Mary Mead is a lovely quiet village where Miss Marple resides. Well, that’s no strictly true of course as there have already been few murders in the area. Gossington Hall was where a body was found in the library in another book so when the famous film start Marina Gregg comes to live there, you just know that the place has got previous…
Miss Marple is getting on a bit now but she’s lost nothing of her wily ways and she’s still telling her Inspector Craddock what to do and how to do it!
The village of St Mary Mead is changing however – that is clear – and Gossington Hall is now the home of a movie star. Miss Marple is well aware of these changes and of her own changing abilities as she gets older. She builds up a picture of people in the village now by comparing them to people she knew or how people used to be.
The here and now mixing with the days gone by – and all in St Mary Mead.
The look of suspicion lands on many in the village and Miss Marple starts to look into her past.
The past is definitely woven into the plot in more ways than one – one of the characters has the look as if ‘Doom has come upon her’ much in the same way as the Lady of Shallott did. The title of the book comes from the Tennyson poem ‘The Lady of Shalott‘ –
“Out flew the web and floated wide-
The mirror crack’d from side to side”
The character and events in the novel are generally believed to have been inspired by the real life tragedy of Gene Tierney an American actress. Unless you know the story, don’t read it before this novel as it’ll give too much away.
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