Nemesis by Agatha Christie

Interestingly, I had already listened to this book before and even written about it on this blog (very briefly) in 2012. But I had absolutely zero recollection of it, and it was really fun to listen to it again, now that I've listened to the rest of Miss Marple's adventures and sleuthing. I literally had no idea what the book was about, so it was like listening to it for the first time. And I really enjoyed it.

This story is different from most of Agatha Christie's other mysteries in that Miss Marple doesn't even know what crime has been committed at the beginning. She gets a posthumous letter from Mr. Rafiel, from the Caribbean Mystery (so it was really helpful to have just finished listening to that one so that I knew what was going on), asking her to fix a problem that he had, but giving her no details or explanation as to what the problem was. So the first half of the book involves Miss Marple searching to find clues as to what this problem could be. She does get some direction after floundering around for a while (couldn't some of that just been edited out? It didn't add anything or any clues to the eventual mystery) and goes on a tour of famous homes and gardens of England as Mr. Rafiel booked, and she begins to meet people who fill in the clues about what crime Mr. Rafiel could be interested in--namely, that his son Michael was arrested and charged with the murder of several young women. Miss Marple ends up finding out a lot more about it and eventually finds out what really happened.

There were some pretty antiquated views about rape and young women working expressed in this book--several times, people said that basically rape never was a real thing and that women invited it on themselves. However, the mystery itself and Miss Marple's character were thoroughly enjoyable and she was very smart at putting things together and getting the murderer to confess. I did figure out who it was before she told us, but it was still good.