Murder Is Easy is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in June 1939, and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in September the same year under the title Easy to Kill. Christie's Superintendent Battle has a cameo appearance at the end, but plays no part in either the solution of the mystery or the apprehension of the criminal. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6), and the US edition at $2.

In The New York Times Book Review for 24 September 1939, Kay Irvin said the book was "one of Agatha Christie's best mystery novels, a story fascinating in its plot, clever and lively in its characters and brilliant in its technique." She concluded, "The story's interest is unflagging, and the end brings excitement as well as surprise."

William Blunt in The Observer of 4 June 1939 raised a question regarding Christie's abilities to write non-crime fiction, which demonstrates that her pen name identity of Mary Westmacott was not yet public knowledge: "I should hate to have to state on oath which I thought was Agatha Christie's best story, but I do think I can say that this is well up in the first six. The humour and humanity of its detail raise a question which only one person can give an answer. Agatha Christie has grown accustomed to working her embroidery on a background of black. Could she, or could she not, leave death and detection out, and embroider as well on green? I believe she is one of the few detective novelists who could. If she would let herself try, just for fun. I believe it would be very good fun for other people, too."

E.R. Punshon in The Guardians issue of 11 July 1939 said that, "Readers may miss the almost supernatural cunning of Poirot, but then if Luke also depended on the famous 'little grey cells' he would be merely another Poirot instead of having his own blundering, straightforward, yet finally effective methods." Mr. Punshon summed up by saying that the story, "must be counted as yet another proof of Mrs Christie's inexhaustible ingenuity."

Mary Dell of the Daily Mirror, wrote on 8 June 1939, "It'll keep you guessing will this latest book from the pen of one of the best thriller writers ever."

An unnamed reviewer in the Toronto Daily Star of 2 December 1939 said, "An anemic thread of romance threatens to sever on occasion but the mystery is satisfying and full of suspense."

Robert Barnard: "Archetypal Mayhem Parva story, with all the best ingredients: Cranford-style village with 'about six women to every man'; doctors, lawyers, retired colonels and antique dealers; suspicions of black magic; and, as optional extra ingredient, a memorably awful press lord. And of course a generous allowance of sharp old spinsters. Shorter than most on detection, perhaps because the detection is, until the end, basically amateur. One of the classics."

Publication history

  • 1939, Collins Crime Club (London), 5 June 1939, Hardcover, 256 pp
  • 1939, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), September 1939, Hardcover, 248 pp
  • 1945, Pocket Books, Paperback, 152 pp (Pocket number 319)
  • 1951, Pan Books, Paperback, 250 pp (Pan number 161)
  • 1957, Penguin Books, Paperback, 172 pp
  • 1960, Fontana Books (Imprint of HarperCollins), Paperback, 190 pp
  • 1966, Ulverscroft Large-print Edition, Hardcover, 219 pp

The book was first serialised in the US in The Saturday Evening Post in seven parts from 19 November (Volume 211, Number 21) to 31 December 1938 (Volume 211, Number 27) under the title Easy to Kill with illustrations by Henry Raleigh. The UK serialisation was in twenty-three parts in the Daily Express from Tuesday, 10 January, to Friday, 3 February 1939, as Easy to Kill. All the instalments carried an illustration by "Prescott". This version did not contain any chapter divisions.

Film, TV, theatrical or radio adaptations

1982

Adapted into a television film in the United States in 1982 with Bill Bixby (Luke), Lesley-Anne Down (Bridget), Olivia de Havilland (Honoria) and Helen Hayes (Lavinia). In this adaptation, Luke is not a retired policeman but a professor from MIT on vacation.

1993

Adapted for stage by Clive Exton, directed by Wyn Jones, and performed at the Duke of York's Theatre, London (23 February – 10 April 1993), starring Charlotte Attenborough, Peter Capaldi, Nigel Davenport, Irene Sutcliffe and Ian Thompson.

2009

A 2009 adaptation, with the inclusion of Miss Marple (played by Julia McKenzie), was included in the fourth series of Agatha Christie's Marple; it deviated significantly from the novel by removing some of the characters in it, while adding new ones and changing those left in. New subplots were introduced, along with darker themes including rape, incest and abortion, and the murderer's motive was changed:

  • Miss Marple, not Luke, meets Lavinia Pinkerton on the train and learns from her of her suspicions about the village deaths and her plans to go to Scotland Yard.
  • Pinkerton is killed in a fall down a London station escalator (about which Marple reads in the papers) rather than a hit-and-run, while en route to Scotland Yard.
  • The first two victims – the village's vicar, and an elderly woman who made home remedies – die differently, the vicar being killed by the murderer's tampering with his beekeeper's mask, causing him to inhale deadly fumes when spraying, and the woman dying after consuming poisonous mushrooms slipped surreptitiously into the pot of stew simmering on her hob.
  • Miss Marple meets Luke Fitzwilliam (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) in the village. He is not retired, but an active police detective, and is dealing with a deceased relative's property. Both recognise one another's investigative inclinations and work together to solve the murders.
  • Gordon Whitfield and Giles Ellsworthy do not appear. As a result, Honoria was said to have been once engaged to Hugh Horton instead of Lord Whitfield.
  • Two new subplots surround the murders, one involving a political campaign in the village, in which one of the candidates knew about the death of Honoria's brother and was blackmailed about it, while the other focuses on Bridget. Bridget is an American who arrives in the village in order to learn about the curious circumstances of her birth (she was found near the village in a basket set adrift on the river). In the novel, Bridget was already well established in the village and was actually engaged to Lord Easterfield/Whitfield, while Luke is the newest arrival to the village and arranges to come and investigate the mysterious deaths on the pretext of being Bridget's cousin.
  • Amy Gibbs is made a relative of one of the victims (someone who in the episode is known as Florrie Gibbs), and lives with Honoria.
  • Honoria Waynflete (played by Shirley Henderson) is shown as an equally disturbed but younger woman with a motive different from that given her in the original story. Her new motive for the murders is revealed to be a need to conceal the truth behind an incident between herself and her developmentally-disabled brother, who raped her after being given his first drink of whisky and taught 'the facts of life'. Honoria confesses to having abandoned her daughter to fate, setting her adrift in a basket on the same river into which, some months earlier, she pushed her brother to his death. When her long-lost child Bridget returns seeking answers, Honoria finds herself compelled to kill all those who know the truth about her actions.

2013

A BBC Radio 4 adaptation in three parts by Joy Wilkinson and directed by Mary Peate, with Patrick Baladi as Luke Fitzwilliam, Lydia Leonard as Bridget Conway, Michael Cochrane as Lord Whitfield, Marcia Warren as Honoria Waynflete, Marlene Sidaway as Miss Pinkerton and Patrick Brennan as Billy Bones/Rivers.

2015

The novel was adapted as a 2015 episode of the French television series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie.

2023

In 2023 it was announced that a new BBC adaptation was to be made. The cast includes David Jonsson as Luke Obiako Fitzwilliam (in this version, a Nigerian attaché) along with Morfydd Clark, Penelope Wilton, Sinead Matthews, Tom Riley, Douglas Henshall, Mathew Baynton and Mark Bonnar. It aired in two episodes on 27 and 28 December 2023.

References

  • Murder Is Easy at the official Agatha Christie website