I saw the new Miss Marple last night.  The story was "A Pocket Full of Rye".
I thought it was pretty well done.  Of course Miss Marple didn't really
look like Miss Marple, but then they never do.  At least once you have
seen your first one.  And sometimes not then.  But the story seemed to
stick very closely to the original book, as far as I can recall.  I
haven't read it for a while, so I guess I will have to go reread it now.

Bill

news:cHm4m.32220$S16.14333@newsfe23.iad...

I'm so glad someone brought this subject up. I missed the ending last night
and it's been so long since I've read the book I don't recall whodunit. And
what did the blackbirds mean? Something regarding the Blackbird Mine, I'm
guessing. Could some one fill me in? Oh, please use spoiler space!
Thanks in advance,
Lorraine Gelly

In article <cHm4m.32220$S16.14...@newsfe23.iad>,

Welllllll.... the first Marple I saw was Angela Lansbury in
the 1980 production of _The Mirror Crack'd._  And she was
very good, but a little more ... vigorous than I'd have
expected in Miss Marple.  The next one I saw was Joan
Hickson, who I thought was spot-on.  I have never had the
misfortune of seeing any of the Margaret Rutherford films,
which I understand can be described as "lots of fun, but not
anything like Marple."

The next lady ... (searches IMDB for name) ... Geraldine
McEwan was, to my mind, not nearly as good.  I haven't seen
any of the ones with Julia McKenzie at all.

Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at hotmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.

Spoiler space:

For the quicie answer:  Lance did it.

He met Gladys at here job at the resort and made up to her.  He was using
a false name and she fell in love with him.  He inveigled her into putting
the taxine into Fortescues marmalade thinking it was something else for
quite another purpose.  His main purpose was to get his hands on the
Blackbird Mine, where a uranium deposit had been found.  The blackbirds
from earlier were put there by Percival's wife who was the daughter of
the man who was Fortescues partner in the Blackbird.  He died under
mysterious circumstances, and his wife raised her daughter to take
revenge on Fortescue.  But the daughter found a better revenge than
killing him.

Bill

I love the names in that one:

Rex
Lancelot
Percival
Elaine (who in legend was unhappily in love with Lancelot)

And the cook is Mrs. Crump!!

--
Francis A. Miniter

Oscuramente
libros, laminas, llaves
siguen mi suerte.

Jorge Luis Borges, La Cifra   Haiku, 6

I believe that Joan Hickson was probably the most believable looking.

As far as the Margaret Rutherford films are concerned they definitely
weren't Miss Marple films.  At least not Agatha Christie's Miss Marple.
But they were fun.  You might want to try them some day.

Of course I recall that when they did the Brother Cadfael mysteries
by Ellis Peters the Brother Cadfael they chose looked nothing like
the Brother Cadfael in the books.

Bill

In article <wXp4m.50416$IU6.24...@newsfe05.iad>,

Yeah, well, the real Brother Cadfael was supposed to be tubby
and to walk with a rolling gait like a sailor.  I don't know
how many top-flight actors they've got, even in Britain, with
those characteristics.

(Hmmmmm... though Peter Ustinov would've done nicely, and he
didn't die till 2004.  Maybe he was busy.)

The thing that bothered me about the BC series was that the
Abbey of Sts. Peter and Paul, with a population of several
hundred, was represented by about a dozen guys standing in
two lines singing the Office.  Pitiful.  But, of course, they
couldn't have afforded to pay two hundred extras and spend
the time and effort teaching them to sing Gregorian chant --
not even in the Czech Republic or Hungary or wherever it was
they filmed it.  They should simply have *avoided* any scene
where the entire community was assembled.

Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at hotmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.

Dorothy J Heydt wrote

Good way of describing them I think.  I'm not crazy about Christie or
eccentric spinster detectives in general but I do like Margaret
Rutherford so I enjoyed them.  (I understand Christie liked them
also.)

Dave in Toronto

In article <a8e2c797-afd4-4dc4-b3a9-2dcbbfd15...@h18g2000yqj.googlegroups.com>,
Dave in Toronto  <dmatthew...@sympatico.ca> wrote:

Christie's Miss Marple, as I understand it, was taken from
life: her mother's aunt who had brought her up, and was known
as "Auntie-Grannie."  She was a very old lady who was cynical
and suspicious of people -- not much like Miss Marple so far --
and always had the worst possible interpretation of
everything anyone did, including comparing it to some
previous malefaction someone else had done in the past.
Hence, Miss Marple's constant prediction of who the murderer
must have been or what he was going to do next, based on her
memory of what the gardener or the tailor's wife or the
butcher's boy had done forty years ago.

Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at hotmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.