In a nutshell
A plodding whodunit which takes its own sweet time to set things up but doesn't quite deliver the punch at the end with its reveal.
Plot
Miss Marple returns to a favorite childhood spot, Bertram's hotel, to experience the nostalgia of the bygone years. The hotel's guests include Miss Marple's gregarious friend Selena Hazy, absent minded Canon Pennyfather who's making his way to a conference in Lucerne via London, hypervigilant Colonel Luscombe accompanied by his precocious ward Elvira Blake and tabloid friendly socialite Lady Bess Sedgwick who always seems to have a knack of generating headlines. While Miss Marple does take great pleasure in the comforts of the place she also quickly comes to sense that there's something sinister going on behind all that external facade.
While a motley group of characters is permeating Bertram's hotel, the city is being terrorized by the daring thefts of a criminal gang which has evaded the police by skillfully impersonating prominent people. Hot on their trail is Chief Inspector Fred Davy who has painstakingly studied the gang's modus operandi and has unearthed a vital clue in his investigation. Almost everyone whom the gang impersonates ends up being a guest at Bertram's hotel.
When Canon Pennyfather disappears on his way to the airport and is miraculously identified at the site of a major railroad robbery, Chief Inspector Davy decides to finally make his way to Bertram's hotel and smoke out the perpetrators. Most of his inquiries are stonewalled until he meets Miss Marple who lets out two vital pieces of information:
- She saw the Canon exiting his hotel room at midnight on the day he disappeared
- A certain race car driver who's doing the rounds of the hotel seems to have caught the fancy of Ms. Elvira Blake
Chief Inspector Davy is intrigued by both pieces of information. A race car was reported to have been the main getaway vehicle at several of the lootings. But before a link is established between the vehicle and the thefts, Canon Pennyfather mysteriously returns with a bump on his head and Elvira Blake survives an attempt on her life. The bullets aimed at Elvira end up taking the life of Bertram's commissionaire, Michael Gorman.
What didn't work for me?
- In a peculiar twist, although Bertram's Hotel is touted as a Miss Marple mystery, she's not a central character in the plot with Chief Inspector Davy taking the lead role in the investigation
- All throughout the novel, Miss Marple just seems to be there at the right place at the right time picking up on all of the suspicious interactions. Instead of deductive reasoning its happenstance which unveils critical clues watering down the detection aspects that we come to expect from an Agatha Christie mystery
- If you are a plundering ring with significant resources why would you repeatedly commit offences that would tie you to one single location - Bertram's Hotel?
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