REVIEW: Motive v Opportunity

 Motive V. Opportunity
Author: Agatha Christie

The mysterious tales of the Tuesday Night Club continue in this 5th Miss Marple short story. The Tuesday Night Club is a group of six friends -- Miss Marple, her nephew, a lawyer, an artist, a writer and a clergyman -- who meet on Tuesday nights to share stories of unsolved or mysterious happenings. Each week a member of the group shares a story, and the others try to figure out the truth. This time it's the lawyer, Mr. Petherick's, turn. His story is a very classic whodunit sort of story -- a dying man makes out a will, but when the time comes to read it, the document has been altered. Many had the opportunity to do it....but who had the motive and the know-how to pull it off??

This is my favorite of these short Marple stories so far! The story is quite short -- only 14 pages long in the old hardback edition of Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories (Putnam, 1985) that I'm reading, but it has a classic Golden Age mystery feel to it. The drama surrounding a death-bed will, a group of relatives and a possible charlatan hanging around hoping for an inheritance, and one sneaky culprit's shenanigans. So much fun to read! 

This story was first published in The Royal Magazine in April 1928 (UK) and in Detective Story Magazine in June of that year (US) under the title "Where's the Catch?'' All of the stories were gathered in the short story collection The Thirteen Problems, published in 1932. 

On to the next story -- Miss Marple's turn -- The Thumb Mark of St Peter. I'm enjoying these stories immensely! Agatha Christie has been my favorite author since I was 9 years old, but until now I never read any of the short stories she wrote. I'm reading through her writings in publication order just for the sheer joy of it!