Sleeping Murder cover

Sleeping Murder

Miss Marple • Book 12

4.00 Goodreads
(53.5K ratings)

Why You'll Love This

A woman renovates a house she's never visited before — and keeps uncovering things she somehow already knows are there.

  • Great if you want: a mystery rooted in buried memory and quiet dread
  • The experience: unhurried and atmospheric, with a creeping sense of unease
  • The writing: Christie builds dread through domesticity — comfort and menace perfectly intertwined
  • Skip if: you want Miss Marple front and center throughout

About This Book

Some houses hold their secrets loosely. The one Gwenda moves into seems almost eager to give them up — but what those secrets reveal is far more unsettling than anything she bargained for. When small, inexplicable details of her new home feel achingly familiar despite her never having been there before, it raises a question she can't shake: what happened here, and why does it feel like it happened to her? Christie builds genuine psychological unease from the very first pages, drawing readers into a mystery that reaches back decades and carries real emotional weight. This isn't just a puzzle to be solved — it's a buried life waiting to be uncovered.

Written as Christie's farewell to her most beloved detective, Sleeping Murder has a quietly elegiac quality that distinguishes it from the rest of the Miss Marple canon. The prose is unhurried, almost dreamlike, which suits a story so concerned with memory and the past bleeding into the present. Miss Marple herself is sharper and more purposeful here than many expect, and Christie's structural instinct — withholding just the right details until precisely the right moment — is working at a subtle, confident pitch throughout.