The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side

The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (1962) Agatha Christie (Miss Marple, #9)

The people, too, looked unreal. The trousered young women, the rather sinister-looking young men and boys, the exuberant bosoms of the fifteen-year-old girls. Miss Marple couldn’t help thinking that it all looked terribly depraved.

…

Mothers came out on doorsteps calling to their children who, as usual, were busy doing all the things they had been told not to do. Children, Miss Marple reflected gratefully, never changed. And presently she began to smile, and noted down in her mind her usual series of recognitions.

Even Mr. Sampson, the oldest man in St. Mary Mead, boasting proudly of being ninety-six though his relations insisted firmly that he was only eighty-six, had staggered along supporting his rheumatic legs with a stick, to see this excitement. He gave it his highest praise: “Ah, there’ll be a lot of wickedness here, I don’t doubt. Naked men and women drinking and smoking what they call in the papers them reefers. There’ll be all that, I expect. Ah yes,” said Mr. Sampson with enormous pleasure, “there’ll be a lot of wickedness.”

“Children feel things, you know,” said Miss Marple, nodding her head. “They feel things more than the people around them ever imagine. The sense of hurt, of being rejected, of not belonging. It’s a thing that you don’t get over just because of advantages.”

Characters: Miss Marple, Marina Gregg, Jason Rudd, Chief Inspector Dermot Craddock, Dr. Haydock, Dr. Sandford, Dolly Bantry, Lola Brewster, Ardwyck Fenn, Giuseppe, Ella Zielinsky, Dr. Maurice Gilchrist, Hailey Preston, Margot Bence, Detective-Sergeant William Tiddler, Councillor Allcock and Mrs. Allcock, Cherry Baker, Jim Baker, Gladys Dixon, Heather Badcock, Arthur Badcock, Laycock, Miss Knight, Colonel and Mrs. Clittering, Mrs Mary Bain, Lynette Brown

Publisher: William Morrow

Rating: 9.5/10

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