Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple’s Last Case is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in October 1976 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed for £3.50 and the US edition for $7.95.
The book features Miss Marple. Released posthumously, it was the last published Christie novel, although not the last Miss Marple novel in order of writing. The story is explicitly set in 1944 but the first draft of the novel had been written even earlier than this during the Second World War. She aids a young couple who choose to uncover events in the wife’s past life, and not let sleeping murder lie.
Plot Summary
[SPOILER ALERT]
Publication history
Agatha Christie wrote Curtain (Hercule Poirot’s last mystery, which concludes the sleuth’s career and life) and Sleeping Murder during World War II to be published after her death, and Sleeping Murder was written sometime during the Blitz, which took place between September 1940 and May 1941. Agatha Christie’s literary correspondence files indicate that the initial draft of the novel eventually published as Sleeping Murder was written early in 1940.
Christie refers to the last Poirot and Miss Marple novels that she penned during the Second World War in her autobiography. She writes that she had written an extra two books during the first years of the war in anticipation of being killed in the raids, as she was working in London. One was for her daughter, Rosalind Hicks, which she wrote first – a book with Hercule Poirot in it – and the other was for Max – with Miss Marple in it. She adds that these two books, after being composed, were put in the vaults of a bank, and were made over formally by deed of gift to her daughter and husband.
The last Marple novel Christie wrote, Nemesis, was published in 1971, followed by Christie’s last Poirot novel Elephants Can Remember in 1972 and then in 1973 by her very last novel Postern of Fate. Aware that she would write no more novels, Christie authorised the publication of Curtain in 1975 to send off Poirot. She then arranged to have Sleeping Murder published in 1976, but she died before its publication in October 1976.
By contrast to Poirot, who dies in the final novel, Miss Marple lives on. This last published novel is set in 1944, but follows novels set in later years and which show Miss Marple to have aged. In Nemesis, Miss Marple does no gardening on the advice of her doctor, showing the effects of her more fragile health; in Sleeping Murder, Miss Marple is frequently on her knees pulling bindweed from the neglected garden at the home of the Reeds, showing her to be stronger, and in the chronology of the fictional character’s life, not working on her truly final case. There is a reference to a wireless set as being a special purchase by Lily were she to receive money by responding to the newspaper notice seeking her, which reinforces the story’s setting in the 1930s as the author intended in her final revisions done in 1950.
Books are listed in the order of publication. While the majority of Christie’s books were first published in the UK. There are many titles that were published first in the US and the title of the book and content may differs from the UK edition in rare cases.
Publication history
- 1976, Collins Crime Club (London), October 1976, Hardcover, 224 pp; ISBN0-00-231785-0
- 1976, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), Hardcover, 242 pp; ISBN0-396-07191-0
- 1977, Fontana Books (Imprint of HarperCollins), Paperback, 192 pp
- 1977, Bantam Books, Paperback
- In the US the novel was serialised in Ladies’ Home Journal in two abridged instalments from July (Volume XCIII, Number 7) to August 1976 (Volume XCIII, Number 8) with an illustration by Fred Otnes.
Sleeping Murder – First Edition Book Identification Guide
The books are listed in the order of publication. While the majority of Agatha Christie’s books were first published in the UK. There are many titles that were first published in the US, the title of the book may differs from the UK edition in some cases.
Note about Book Club Editions (BCE) and reprints:
- UK: You can see statements of later reprint dates or of book club on the copyright page.
- US: The US reprint publishers usually use the same sheets as the first edition and are harder to identify by looking at the title page or the copyright page. One may identify a BCE by looking at the DJ, which doesn’t have a price on top of the front flap and a “Book Club Edition” imprint at the bottom. If the dust jacked is clipped at both the top/bottom of the front flap. You can safely assume it’s a BCE . If the book is missing the dust jacket. Later BCE editions can be identified by its plain boards, while first printings are issued in quarter cloth.
Please refer to the gallery for detailed images of true first edition bindings and dust jackets.
Sleeping Murder – First Edition Dust Jacket Identification Guide
First edition binding(s) and various dust jacket printings identification.
