A Murder Is Announced

I like the whodunnit aspect of this, but it does get a bit bogged down in hidden identities and motives. And of course Miss Marple has the perfect hidden talent for the ending. Not bad, but not the best.

I got it! This is only the third (edit: fourth actually, I completely forgot “The Moving Finger” lol) Miss Marple I've read, but I'm quite familiar with Poirrot, and the crime itself seemed very Poirrot-like to me. I utterly failed at guessing the killer (or even how the crime occured) in “The Murder at the Vicarage”, and while I guessed a few key points in “The Body in the Library”, this is the first book where I actually got most of what happened before the reveal.
Miss Blacklock seemed extremely suspicious to me since the very beggining. A murder attempt happening without an actual death always casts suspicions on the “victim” of said attempt, as per quite a few other Christie novels.
This suspicious weirdly only grew, and after Bunny's death I couldn't imagine anyone else being the killer. Blacklock's conversation with Miss Marple, where Marple mentions how she has family and friends, but it is heartbreaking to lose the one person who knew you as a child, completely solidified it. At this point though, I was under the impression that Bunny thought that Charlotte was Letitia and was murdered out of precaution, in case she started noticing/remembering things and that Miss Blacklock wasn't actually Miss Blacklock (well, she was, but not quite). I should've known this wasn't likely due to Bunny's personality and devotion to her friend, but oh well, I was bound to be misled somewhere.
Bonus: I also guessed who Pip was almost immediately! I had a friend of a friend with the name and nickname, and in true Miss Marple fashion, I drew similarities ;)
Overall, I really loved this book, and it felt like a very classic Agatha Christie mystery to me, which I always love!

3.8