“Nemesis” by Agatha Christie – Postmortem Guidance

There are only so many ways to diversify the concept of a murder investigation, but Agatha Christie never relented and virtually always managed to bring something new and interesting to the table.

In her Miss Marple series she experimented from time to time, diverging from the classical whodunit formula we've come to expect from, and more often than not the results were rather pleasing, if not interesting at the very least.

In Nemesis we see this type of deviation from the norm, as Jane Marple is sent to investigate a rather unusual case. To begin with, her friend Jason Rafiel (previously encountered in A Caribbean Mystery) falls ill and, as a dying request, asks Jane to investigate a murder.

Unfortunately, the vague note and a bequest of twenty thousand pounds were all he left her, leaving our beloved sleuth with a seemingly impossible task: to crack a murder without knowing who is involved or any other information really.

Needless to say, she accepts to do what she can to fulfill the request, and not long after she receives an invitation from the Famous Homes and Gardens of Great Britain to participate in one of their great tours... an invitation sent by Rafiel himself. Guided by her friend from beyond the grave, she sets out on a dangerous and yet captivating investigation, one that makes her talents shine bright as day.

With a slightly different premise than usual, in the sense that our protagonist is busy seeking out the crime rather than having it handed to her on a silver platter, it should not be surprising that our expectations are defied, at least in terms of what we await from the author.

The pace is noticeably slower than usual, as the minimalistic clues left behind by Rafiel truly challenge Miss Marple and force her to take into account the tiniest and most banal of details.

The case itself is challenging as always and you get a fair chance at solving it before Marple does, though to be fair chances are that you'll be too caught up in the intrigue to bother with that. The further the case advances, the grander the intrigue becomes and the more it's obvious how much interference Miss Marple is about to cause.

On top of being a solid murder mystery that takes a bit of a different approach, Nemesis is also a rather interesting meditation on the concept of aging. If anything, it tries to convey the point that even though the body may get older and frail, the mind can still remain sharp, active and valuable.

As a matter of fact, the mind is pretty much the only thing Miss Marple can count on in her investigation, and she dispenses away with eccentric investigation techniques and the like in favor of good old-fashioned deductive reasoning and lulling people with a false sense of security.

All things taken into consideration, Nemesis may have taken a slightly different direction than what Agatha Christie has become used to, but certainly didn't prevent it from retaining all the elements that make her novels so appealing.

The mystery itself is as challenging as always, the characters are a delight to discover, the whole architecture of the story feels fresh and different in a good way, not to mention the many insights into old age.

It is most certainly a novel any murder mystery or Agatha Christie fan ought to check out.

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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.