Agatha Christe’s The Moving Finger: A Spoiler-Free Review
“Murder is a nasty business on an empty stomach.”
Don’t you feel that some fictional characters are just too unreal to be … well, unreal? Have you ever met a character in some novel that is so quirky that you imagine the author had to have met or known someone with just those kinds of quirks in order to write a character like that?
Such is the case with one particular character in Agatha Christie’s The Moving Finger. Megan is that character’s name and she isn’t the only distinct female player in this particular novel. In fact, the variety of women we meet in The Moving Finger leads us to wonder if exploring female complexities of nature was a purposeful theme in this particular work of Christie’s.
I have much to say about this book (it’s one of my favorite Christies), so we’ll start with a short overview, move on to some likes and dislikes, and other thoughts, and of course some favorite quotes. At the end, I’ll tell you how and where you can read, listen, and watch a few adaptations of this 4th installment of the Miss Marple series!
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The Moving Finger: A spoiler-free review
The Moving Finger was written by Agatha Christie in 1942 and was #3 on Agatha’s list of personal favorites of her own works. It also happens to be one of my own favorites. I just adore the characters and I love the romantic subplots, which sort of crop up as a happy surprise by the end. The “moving finger” itself refers to the ever-moving finger of accusation in this story, tormenting a small town and casting doubt and blame on each of its residents in turn.
The story is narrated by Jerry Burton, who has recently been in a plane accident and has be recommended to recuperate in a small village where he can relax and where nothing much happens (ha! irony). He chooses, along with his spunky sister Joanna, Lymstock, where they rent a cottage and dig right into village life.
Said village life, however, is not so idyllic when the siblings receive a poison pen letter, which they do not take seriously, but which leads them to find out that many others in the Lymstock have received equally vicious anonymous letters, and not everyone takes them as lightly as our new-in-town duo.
Soon, of course, someone dies, and the poison pen letter author is to blame … but who is she? Jerry and Joanna make multiple friends in Jerry’s quest to discover the culprit. Going against his doctor’s orders to relax and recover, Jerry seems to find his own way of healing through detection, helping the police, and befriending the deceased woman’s adult, but childlike daughter, Megan … but more about her later.
What I liked:
I really enjoyed Jerry as a narrator, but I almost always love when a Christie novel has an unexpected narrator. Jerry and Joanna are delightful the entire time.
I love the poison pen concept in pretty much any story, the same way I love a good poisoning. Perhaps these elements put me more into the time period, or add to the intrigue somehow, I don’t know, but I just find them juicy plot points and I love them.
I like Lymstock. It’s a small town where everyone knows everything about everyone, but they have the decency to respect each others’ secrets, if you will, or at least more so than the more vicious crowd in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
I loved the love. The Moving Finger contains a love story and I am always here for that!
What I didn’t like:
It was surprising to me when Miss Marple didn’t actually come on the scene until the last quarter of the story. She was really barely a character at all, but she did come on and she did solve the mystery. This upsets some Christie fans, as they’re really not sure why it has Miss Marple in it at all, but I actually think it’s creative and I didn’t mind it. I was suprised, but in an interested sort of way. I think Christie was clever in making every story different than readers expect.
My biggest dislike was the way Megan was written as just too childish. I admit, however, that I first listened to a dramatized audio version of this story before reading it, and the reader used a weirdly childish voice for Megan, so I had a hard time not reading with that tone in my mind. But I don’t think it’s all me. Megan starts out very unkempt and schoolgirl-like, but gets a glow-up later when Jerry takes her to London on a whim and gets her a makeover. Even still, if I didn’t already know the romance was coming, I would have had to completely reframe my thinking about Megan when she became a romantic interest, since the first half of the book conditioned me to think of her more as a child.
The only other thing here that bothered me was the weird pet names Jerry sometimes uses for Megan, and sometimes he’s downright rude. Calling her “little child” is a tad annoying, but at one point he asks her outright, “Why do you wear those disgusting stockings? … They’re loathsome. And why wear a pullover like a decayed cabbage?” Luckily, Megan is not easily offended, but accusations like those aren’t winning most men any favor from females.
About those women …
Megan is just one of several interesting female characters in The Moving Finger, and the way the men of the story are often trying to think through the behaviors of the women around them, leads one to wonder if this novel was secondarily intended to be a comical study of the nature of women, and how they’re perceived, but not actually understood by men.
Megan is quirky in the best way. She’s out of school — age 20 actually— but still acts like a child in many ways. She’s a brilliant thinker, but cares nothing for her appearance. She feels unloved, but matter-of-factly accepts that fact as unchangeable and gets on with her life. She’s shockingly unoffendable, but feels certain things deeply, particularly fear and distrust. While the autism spectrum has only developed since Christie’s death, Megan’s behavior strikes me as very similar to a few people in my own life who have Asperger Syndrome. These people are absolutely brilliant thinkers, but their social sensibilities are atypical. This is what makes me wonder if Agatha Christie was personally acquainted with a shining star like Megan in real life.
I laughed aloud when the minister’s wife tells Jerry about Megan,
“I’ve been worried about that girl for a long time. Girls with brains are so liable to turn into morons, aren’t they?”
I noted several other quotes that support the theme of this study of female thought and character. These quotes, when read back, however, tell a deeper story than at first glance. For example, near the beginning of the book, Jerry chats with a middle-aged still-single woman. On the surface, she seems to mean it when she says,
“... I don’t like to see anyone not getting all they can out of life. I enjoy life myself and I want everyone to enjoy it too. People say to me you must be bored to death living down there in the country all the year round. Not a bit of it, I say. I’m always busy, always happy! There’s always something going on in the country.”
We later find out this woman has been miserably pining after a man for decades and is not so thoroughly happy after all. Isn’t it just like women to fein happiness rather than appear unhappy? To be truthful would be to show weakness, in her perception, and she’s ashamed.
Another woman comes upon the scene and Jerry is immediately enamored by her absolute beauty and perfection of body … until she opens her mouth. Although she doesn’t say much at all, it’s enough to completely break the spell. Jerry narrates,
“I fell to reflecting what would have happened if the Gods had given Helen of Troy exactly those flat accents. How strange that a girl could trouble your inmost soul so long as she kept her mouth shut, and that the moment she spoke the glamour could vanish as though it had never been. ”
(Can we pause to reflect on the brilliance of Christie’s writing with that above quote please?)
The parade of archetypal female characters continues with the vicar’s wife. Her husband having been susinctly described as a remote, knowledgeable history buff who practically lived in his study, his wife is scarily described in a way that anyone with church going experience will immediately recognize in their own circle:
“Mrs. Dane Calthrop, on the other hand, was quite terrifyingly on the spot. I have perhaps purposely put off mentioning her, because I was from the first a little afraid of her. She was a woman of character and of almost Olympian knowledge. She was not in the least the typical vicar’s wife — but that, as I set it down, makes me ask myself, what do I know of vicars’ wives?”
Well, I’ll tell you what I know of church ladies, Jerry, and I can see the pantyhose and smell peppermint candies in that lady’s giant handbag.
And finally, Miss Marple enters the scene when one village member decides to take things into her own hands, acknowledging that the police are doing their best (Christie always maintains respect for police … no bumbling detectives here), but she is going to call in an expert:
“I don’t mean someone who knows about anonymous letters of even about murder. I mean someone who knows people. Don’t you see? We want someone who knows a great deal about wickedness. ”
Enter, Miss Marple, the ultimately unusual female protagonist, who effectively solves the case.
Meanwhile, among this vastly arrayed cast of women, the men who surround them are so sure they have them figured out. Jerry thinks he knows his sister’s every motive and emotion, Megan’s parents think they know her true desires, Doctor Owen thinks he knows what Joanna will feel about certain things, Mr. Symmington is so sure certain affections will be returned that he banks everything on it. And most of all, the entire cast of men, police included, assume the poison pen letter writer is a woman. Because, of course she would be … right? I always love how Agatha Christie challenges assumptions.
How to Read, Listen, or Watch The Moving Finger
My beautiful copy of The Moving Finger is a new William Morrow edition with stunning cover art by Holly Ovenden. I hope to collect all the Miss Marple editions illustrated by this artist, because they’re just beautiful!
Purchase this beautiful edition and the rest of this newest Miss Marple collection with cover illustrations by Holly Ovenden.
You can also listen to the dramatized BBC version of this story on Audible as part of More from Miss Marple’s Casebook. Or of course you can listen to the audiobook in its entirety. I seriously love my Audible subscription. I’d cancel all my TV subs before I’d get rid of Audible! You can sign up for a free trial here.
Adaptations
I’ve watched both TV adaptations of The Moving Finger and much prefer the 2006 version with Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple. It’s Season 2, Episode 4, and you can watch it on Prime Video. I love the casting of Megan, Jerry, and Joanna in this version, and I think they did a great job with the story and costumes, although some costumes read a little more 50’s and 60’s than they would have accurately been if the story were set in 1942 when it was written.
The only thing I didn’t love about this adaptation is that they made Jerry a little bit emo and he’d had a self-guided motorcycle accident rather than a plane crash, implying he was suicidal. I prefer the lighthearted and upbeat original version of Jerry as Agatha wrote him, but otherwise, they did an excellent job here.
The other TV version is Season 1, Episodes 4 & 5 of the 1987 Miss Marple series starring Joan Hickson, which you can also watch on Prime Video. This series just is not my favorite, though a lot of people love it. Even though the episodes to tend to be very book-accurate compared to the more modern series, I have a really hard time getting past the very 80’s inspired costuming. Meagan is blond in this version and while I’m sure 80’s fashionistas back then loved her looks, her glow up was just … more 80’s. I do not like 80’s fashion and hair/makeup at all, so I wish they’d tried a little bit more to be historically on the nose. It just would have aged better. Maybe it’s silly to let the styling affect my opinion of an adaptation that much, but I can’t help it.
As far as I know, those are the only TV versions of The Moving Finger made so far! If they ever bring a new Miss Marple to the screen, though, I hope they’ll consider this book as a great one to adapt!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this admittedly lengthy review! Be sure and tell me your thoughts in a Letter to the Editor. I’d love to hear them.
Until next time,
Ariadne
P.S. I do not enable comments on individual articles, but I do encourage Letters to the Editor! Please know that your thoughts may be included an article featuring these letters at some point down the road, though your email address will be kept confidential, of course.
