I am fairly sure I have never read They Do It With Mirrors before, but as I recently watched a TV adaptation, it was difficult for me to judge how easy it would have been to predict the outcome. I suspect it wouldn’t be.
Jane Marple has not seen her old school friend Carrie Louise for many years, but their mutual friend Ruth thinks something is not right, so she asks Jane to visit if invited. Carrie Louise is a frail woman whom others yearn to protect. She was left with a fortune after the death of her first husband. Her second husband left her for a dancer. Her third husband, Lewis Serrocold, is using wings of her massive home as a rehabilitation center for young criminals.
When Jane arrives, she finds quite a few people residing in or visiting the main house. Carrie Louise’s granddaughter Gina is there with her American husband Walter. Carrie Louise’s daughter Mildred is widowed and living there. Alex and Stephen, the two sons of Carrie Louise’s second husband, are there (well, Alex soon arrives on a visit), and they all get a surprise visit from Christian Gulbrandsen, an executor of the estate trust and Carrie Louise’s stepson. He is there to talk to Lewis, who is momentarily away, but Miss Marple sees them conferring outside when Lewis returns home.
After dinner, Christian has gone to his room to write letters when one of the inmates, Edgar Lawson, strikes up an argument with Lewis Serrocold and starts flashing a gun around. Edgar sometimes says different important men are his father and has moments of confusion and paranoia. This time he says Serrocold is his father and has been spying on him. The two go into his office, from which the others can hear the argument. They hear a gun fired outside, and then the gun in the office is fired, but when they get into the office, both men are fine. Later, though, Christian Gulbrandsen is found shot to death.
When questioned by the police, Lewis tells them Christian suspected Carrie Louise was being poisoned, her arthritis symptoms being similar to slow arsenic poisoning. And sure enough, when the police check a bottle of tonic that Serrocold told her not to take, it’s poisoned.
Soon there are two more deaths, and insights are needed from Miss Marple.
There are a lot of characters in this story and perhaps they’re not as vivid as Christie’s usually are, but she has set us an entertaining puzzle to solve.
What? Me Read? 
I don’t think this is one of her best, although I did enjoy it. I looked back at my review and I didn’t guess the solution, but I think the clues were there if I’d been paying more attention.
Probably
I like the solution of this more than the characters – I feel she tries too hard to get into a modern mindset with some of them, and doesn’t quite pull it off. I love your theme by the way – have you changed it recently, or has it been like this for months and I’m just noticing?? Either way, it looks bright and clean! Lovely!
Oh, thanks! I just redesigned it this week. Unfortunately, before I started, I didn’t realize that the WordPress templates have been changed not to allow submenus, so I lost all my submenus, which makes it a little more difficult to find books on my site by genre. All the top menus to go pages which then link to other pages. It’s a pain. But anyway, I think it looks nice. Yeah, I think the whole psychological angle doesn’t work well, but then again, it never does in these older books, because some of the theories are just out there.
I just tried it out and actually I quite like it that way – easier to browse through a list on a page than it is on a drop-down menu, I think.
Oh, good! Thanks! I just removed one unnecessary layer, which meant adding a few more menu items, but I think it’s a little better.
Like many readers, I went through a big Christie phase as a teenager, racing through all the Marples and several of her standalones. My memories of this one have faded over time, but it’s lovely to have a reminder of it here. Many thanks for the review and some happy recollections of my youth!
Happy to oblige!