The introduction to Miss Marple . . .

A small village of St Mary Mead, where nothing exciting happens. . .

The story is told from the vicar's point of view, a body discovered in his study that the whole little village is up in arms.

Secrets get out, and accusations are made and the funny thing - no one likes Miss Marple due to her perceptive skills of always being right about human behaviour.

You learn about the village, the vicar helps with the inquiries, and Miss Marple sticks her nose in (even though everyone makes it clear they don't like her - they cam trust her opinion) she doesn't even appear much in the novel.

She always pops up when they least expect it. This was a nice cosy read with my tea and biscuits, delving deeper into small village with their own dramas and gossip.

Miss Marple is your typical spinster with her knitting needles, watching an observing her surroundings. Life has such few pleasures left.

I enjoyed the novel a lot and will continue Miss Marples Adventures. ( )

Très amusant. Certains personnages sont convenus mais le pasteur narrateur est un délice de contradictions.

Oddly structured, with shifting narratives. Someone here suggested Marple was a secondary character who just took over the narrative as the book was written, and that feels like it might be on the money. A lot of "women are this, and women are that" comments by the characters ad nauseum. Let's hope that disappears in the other Marple books. I confess, it kept me hanging on just to find out "who done it?" and in that regard there is fun to be had ( )

Marple Begins: A Double Bluff
Review of the William Morrow Paperbacks Kindle eBook edition (2009) of the Collins Crime Club hardcover original (1930)

“I rather like Miss Marple,” I said. “She has, at least, a sense of humour.”
“She’s the worst cat in the village,” said Griselda. “And she always knows every single thing that happens—and draws the worst inferences from it.”
Griselda, as I have said, is much younger than I am. At my time of life, one knows that the worst is usually true.

Miss Marple is a white-haired old lady with a gentle, appealing manner—Miss Wetherby is a mixture of vinegar and gush. Of the two Miss Marple is much the more dangerous.

Miss Marple is not the type of elderly lady who makes mistakes. She has got an uncanny knack of being always right.

I wondered very much what exactly it was that Miss Marple wished to talk over. Of all the ladies in my congregation, I considered her by far the shrewdest. Not only does she see and hear practically everything that goes on, but she draws amazingly neat and apposite deductions from the facts that come under her notice.

I read quite a lot of Agatha Christie in the old days but those were primarily the Hercule Poirot stories and novels, and I somehow overlooked the Miss Marple books. Now they are another chance to binge on some lighter cozy mystery reading in between my various one-offs of literary fiction and such. The Marple books mostly take place in various English village settings and The Murder at the Vicarage is in Miss Marple's own community of St. Mary Mead.

In fact, Miss Marple is one of the primary witnesses as she is the neighbour of the local vicar and his wife. Colonel Protheroe, a not-well-liked church figure, is found murdered by gunshot in the vicar's study, supposedly having written a note timed at 6:20pm with a broken and stopped clock showing 6:22pm near at hand. No one heard the shot and everyone seems to have an alibi for the apparent time of death. But then the village doctor says the death must have occurred much earlier. To add to the confusion, various suspects start to confess to the crime. Inspector Slack finds that Miss Marple is the observant witness that he needs to solve the crime.

“The point is,” she said, “that one must provide an explanation for everything. Each thing has got to be explained away satisfactorily. If you have a theory that fits every fact—well, then, it must be the right one. But that’s extremely difficult."

“I know that in books it is always the most unlikely person. But I never find that rule applies in real life. There it is so often the obvious that is true."

The Murder at the Vicarage was a great start to a Miss Marple binge and in its own way is a whodunnit classic together with some of Christie's unique mystery solutions such as those of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Poirot #4 - 1926) and Murder on the Orient Express (Poirot #10 - 1934).

Confusion for Completists
The title of this edition describes The Murder at the Vicarage as Miss Marple #1, but some lists, including the Goodreads Miss Marple Listopia, count it as Miss Marple #2 with the short story collection The Thirteen Problems (1932) counted as #1 only because some of those stories appeared in 1927.

See cover at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bf/The_Murder_at_the_Vicarage_First_...
The front cover of the original 1930 Collins Crime Club (UK) edition. Image sourced from Wikipedia.

Trivia and Links
The Murder in the Vicarage was adapted twice for English language television. Both of those are reasonably faithful to the original plot. I did not find any free trailers or postings of either of them, but they are both available on the Britbox streaming service here in Canada.

The first adaptation was as part of the BBC's Miss Marple (1984-1992) series as Season 2 Episode 2 in 1986 which starred Joan Hickson as Miss Marple.

The second adaptation was as part of ITV's Agatha Christie’s Marple (2004-2013) reboot series as Season 1 Episode 2 in 2004 which starred Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple.

There is a French language adaptation for the Les petits meurtres d'Agatha Christie [French: The Little Murders of Agatha Christie] (2009 - ongoing) series. The episode based The Murder in the Vicarage was Season 2 Episode 14 L'Affaire Protheroe (2016).This series does not feature a Miss Marple character and instead has a police detective and a reporter as the leads. The plots are transplanted to France and are considerably changed from the originals. ( )

Another good Miss Marple story, in the usual style. The narrator was especially good, although I can never decide if I like male or female readers best for Agatha Christie audiobooks. I was pretty sure I knew who the murderer was, using my new technique of solving Miss Marple stories, but once again I was way off. I had to console myself with having correctly figured out a minor element of the story. In all, a thoroughly good book. ( )