Books like Starring Miss Marple: A Murder is Announced / The Body in the Library / Murder With Mirrors

This review is for The Body in the Library, the third cozy mystery book in the Miss Marple series, written by Agatha Christie in 1942. I read this book at least once in the past, and even wrote a very brief review on Goodreads in 2017 when I was on a quest to write something for every book I'd previously read. Now I'm on a different quest: the April 2018 Agatha Christie Readathon where this book was selected as my "re-read" book in the challenge. I'll also say what I wrote the first time around was so laughable, I'm shocked at myself. It was useless, but that won't be the case today!If push came to shove, I think I'm more of a fan of Miss Marple's detection style yet I prefer Hercule Poirot as a character. Marple is wonderful and I enjoy everything I've read with her as the main detective, but she lacks a little pizzazz to jolt you along the path. In this caper, a good friend of hers wakes up to find a dead body in her library. Neither her husband, guests, or servants recognize the young girl. It appears like her husband is the guilty party and when news spreads around town, the investigation begins. Suspects ran the gamut of an older gentlemen that the dead girl was growing close to, especially when he is ~50 years her senior. He thought of her as his adopted daughter, even choosing to leave her some money. Everyone believed him to be a fool and her to be a gold-digger. Maybe it was his son-in-law and daughter-in-law who stood to inherit less once he had passed away. Or was it the playboy filmmaker known for dabbling with slightly younger women. Throw in a complicated dance arrangement, a secret marriage, and a few more potential leads, including a side-plot where a car goes missing and another young girl turns up dead, then you've got quite a forehead-squisher of a story.Christie never fails to astound me with the ingenuity behind each of the plots. You think you know everything, and one or two details don't exactly line up, but you just can't solve the puzzle. The clues are generally all out there, just masked in such a way that you have to work hard to guess what's slightly off. Marple always picks up on it, much to the dismay of the police investigation team. 'Marple's just a doddering old fool who gets lucky sometimes. She's a biddy putting her nose in places where it doesn't belong.' But you see, dear investigators... it does belong because she always finds her criminals before you do.Exploration of fraud, loss, money problems, and guilt are the top of the suspect list this time. Someone's lying, and while it may see obvious at first, suspicion is cast in every direction. The story flows easily, even if you feel sometimes you're being taking on a tour of the unknown. It's that very path that winds you up while you're learning all the facts, then drops you off a swirling abyss of options. One by one, the alibis are proven fake or real... the past secrets come to light... and the true notions of an evil mind begin to materialize. That's why I love the cozy mystery but in particular the Grand Dame's approach to delivering the story. Little by little, not in any massive way, but enough the needle moves ever so slightly until it begins to dance in front of you upon landing at the final solution. I'm so excited to read another Marple next week: Murder at the Vicarage!