“They Do It with Mirrors” by Agatha Christie – Ultimate Delinquency

Agatha Christie has had such a prolific and illustrious career that a large number of novels have made it into the “classics of literature” category, which in turn, unfortunately, overshadowed many other stories which, perhaps not being as good, still remain fantastic and for the most part, largely better than what has been printed since.

They Do it with Mirrors is one such Agatha Christie novel, and it follows Miss Marple as she is beckoned by an old friend, Ruth Van Rydock, to go visit her sister, Carrie Louise Martin, at her family home (well, more like family mansion) and shed light on some strange happenings that have been bothering that latter one.

With the home having been recently converted into a correctional facility for first-time offenders by Carrie Louise's current husband and complex relationships between various family members being as strained as they could ever be (Carrie Louise married three times so far), the situation almost seems ripe for murder.

And of course, as seems to be case, wherever Miss Marple goes, the Grim Reaper relentlessly follows; a bloody murder soon sets everything in motion.

As has eternally been the case, when it becomes a question of how solid the mystery itself is, and whether or not it is fairly presented to the reader giving them an actual chance at solving it, Agatha Christie doesn't disappoint.

You can rest assured that you are going to have a large list of suspects to look through, an acceptable amount of red herrings thrown your way, some twists and turns that will leave you staring wide-eyed at the pages, and of course, a climactic resolution that wraps everything up nice and smooth.

I will admit though that in comparison to some of her other novels, the mystery in this one felt a bit easy to resolve, and the mechanics behind the murder itself were a bit simpler than we've come to expect.

Of course, this is only in relation to her own greatest works, so objectively-speaking, these problems aren't worth considering, unless of course you are hunting for only the best of the best literary works out there.

Now, the following aspect of the book can be a positive or a negative depending on your tastes, but I believe that looking at it beyond the scope of bias, it serves the mystery quite well. This time around, Christie returns to the mechanic of having on huge family with plenty of characters that have different relationships and dynamics with each other.

This makes for a fair amount of people to keep track of, but it seems that Christie finds the sweet spot in between the number of characters and their depth, giving us a large cast of fairly interesting people to think about, one which doesn't feel saturated in any way or underdeveloped.

All in all, even though it may be true that They Do It with Mirrors is not Agatha Christie's best novel, it nevertheless remains a superb work of literature in the detective genre, giving us yet again a solid mystery, a memorable cast, a fiendish murder, and of course, a much-welcome re-acquaintance with Miss Marple.

I definitely recommend this novel to Agatha Christie fans, and anyone just looking for a good murder mystery in general.

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Agatha Christie (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) Personal site Agatha Christie is thought of by many as being the grandmother of murder mysteries. Throughout her novels, which include the classics And Then There Were None and Death on the Nile, Christie developed many groundbreaking techniques for her time, most of which are being used in one way or another by modern murder mystery writers.