Themes

Element of a Murder Mystery
As in nearly all Agatha Christie’s novels, the main theme is murder and its subsequent resolution. There are a large number of suspects, each with a motive or an opportunity and many clues. Miss Marple manages to solve the mystery because s...

Money and Greed
The main suspects are believed to have a motive for killing Miss Blacklock because they want to get their hands on her inheritance.In the end, however, it’s Miss Blacklock herself who will do anything, even sacrifice her dear friend Dora, in the pursuit of m...

Village Life
Chipping Cleghorn represents a typical English village full of different and unusual characters. All the neighbors know each other, nobody locks their doors before dark and everybody gets involved in any event that occurs. Besides those facts, people a...

Racism and Prejudice
Detective Craddock suspects Mitzi early on as being connected to the crime because she is "foreign," like Rudi Scherz - kinda prejudiced, and a bit unfounded. But to cut him some slack, he acknowledges this conjecture as biased. Mitzi herself shows s...