In the village of Chipping Cleghorn, a bizarre entry is found amid the 'For Sale' notices and job advertisements in the personal column of the local paper. 'A murder is announced,' it reads, 'and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6.30 p.m.' Curious villagers are baffled. Is this a practical joke or an invitation to a murder game? At the appointed hour several of them do turn up at Little Paddocks, home of Letitia Blacklock, to await developments. Prompt at 6.30, the lights go out, a man, apparently clutching a revolver, shouts, 'Stick 'em up' in a voice reminiscent of American gangster films and shots ring out. When the lights go back on again, Miss Blacklock is found slightly wounded and the intruder is lying dead in the room. Detective Inspector Craddock, investigating the murder, discovers that most of the people gathered at Little Paddocks that evening have secrets to hide but he is powerless to prevent further killings in the village. Only Jane Marple, staying with the daughter of an old friend, wife of Chipping Cleghorn's vicar, is able eventually to reveal the truth behind the murder that was so brazenly announced before it happened.

Agatha Christie's second great creation, after Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple is seen at her best in this characteristically ingenious and engaging novel. Gently coaxing information from the villagers over cups of tea and cakes, the elderly spinster reveals her unexpected shrewdness about human nature and the passions that can possess the most unlikely individuals as she works her way quietly but inexorably towards a solution to the murderous events that have shattered Chipping Cleghorn's tranquility. Miss Marple's 'little grey cells', as this novel shows better than any of the others in which she appears, are as powerfully effective as the ones on which Poirot so regularly prides himself.

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