Murder Is Easy

Plot summary

Upon his return to England after his overseas job in the police, Luke Fitzwilliam shares a London-bound train carriage with Lavinia Pinkerton. She talks to him about her reason for travelling to Scotland Yard: she plans to report a serial killer in her village and tells him who was killed and who will next be killed – Amy Gibbs, Tommy Pierce, and Harry Carter have been killed; Dr John Humbleby will be the next victim. This woman reminds him of a favourite aunt, so he replies politely and recalls what she said.

Luke reads of Miss Pinkerton's death the next day, and then of the death of Dr Humbleby, who has died of septicaemia. Luke will not let this rest, and he travels to the village, Wychwood under Ashe, where his good friend connects him to his cousin Bridget Conway.

Luke poses as an author researching material for a book on beliefs in witchcraft and superstition, as he investigates. He stays at the home of Gordon Ragg aka Lord Whitfield (Easterfield in the US edition), claiming to be a cousin of Bridget Conway, Whitfield's secretary and fiancée. He and Conway receive the assistance of Honoria Waynflete, a woman who, they believe, may know the person behind the deaths. He talks with villagers to learn the stories of the recent murders, including Mr Abbot, the solicitor who fired Tommy Pierce from his service; the Reverend Mr Wake, local rector; Mr Ellsworthy, an antique shop owner who appears to be mentally unstable; and Dr Thomas, Humbleby's younger partner.

Most people in the village view the series of deaths as accidents, not murders.

Luke believes Ellsworthy to be the killer because of his mental instability. Seeing Ellsworthy return home with blood on his hands at the summer solstice adds to this image. Later, Luke and Miss Waynflete witness Whitfield arguing with his chauffeur, Rivers, who had taken Whitfield's Rolls-Royce for a joyride.

Luke and Bridget realise that they are in love with each other, then they find Rivers dead, killed by a blow to the head. After dinner in Gordon's home, Luke listens to Gordon tell the story of how anyone who insults or disrespects him is avenged. He lists all the murdered locals and their offence: Mrs Horton had argued with him, Tommy Pierce did mocking impressions of him, Harry Carter shouted at him while drunk, Amy Gibbs was impertinent to him, Humbleby disagreed with him on the village water supply, and Rivers used his car without permission and then spoke disrespectfully to him. All of them died soon afterwards. He believes this is divine justice.

Characters

Main characters

Luke Fitzwilliam – an ex-police officer in Mayang Strait

Bridget Conway – Jimmy Lorrimer's cousin, and Luke's connection to Miss Pinkerton's village

Lord Whitfield (Easterfield in the U.S. edition) – Gordon Ragg, a self-made millionaire, and Bridget's fiancé; he owns Ashe Manor

Honoria Waynflete – a spinster once betrothed to Gordon Ragg

Suspects

Mr Ellsworthy – the owner of the antique shop, who performs occult rituals

Dr Geoffrey Thomas – the village doctor (and partner of the late Dr Humbleby)

Major Horton – a widower who owns bulldogs

Mr Abbot – a local solicitor who employed Tommy Pierce

Mr Wake – the local rector

Supporting characters

Mrs Anstruther – Bridget's aunt

Jimmy Lorrimer – Luke's friend, Bridget's cousin

Mrs Church – Amy Gibb's aunt

Mrs Pierce – Tommy's mother, has a tobacco and paper shop

Mrs Jessie Humbleby – widow of Dr Humbleby, Rose's mother

Rose Humbleby – daughter of Dr Humbleby

Superintendent Battle – Inspector from Scotland Yard who helps to close the case and arrest the suspect.

Sir William Ossington – Billy Bones, Luke's friend at Scotland Yard

Victims

Harry Carter – the landlord of the "Seven Stars" and a drunkard

Amy Gibbs – a servant

Mrs Lydia Horton – Major Horton's wife

Dr Humbleby – a local doctor

Tommy Pierce – an annoying youth

Miss Lavinia Pinkerton – a spinster

Mr Rivers – chauffeur to Lord Whitfield

Literary significance and reception

The Times Literary Supplement of 10 June 1939 published a review of the book by Maurice Percy Ashley, together with And Death Came Too by Richard Hull which began "A week in which new novels by Mr Hull and Mrs Christie appear should be a red letter week for connoisseurs of detective fiction. One must, however, reluctantly confess that neither of them is fully up to standard."

After considering in isolation And Death Came Too, Ashley turned his attention to Murder Is Easy and started, "Mrs Christie has abandoned M. Hercule Poirot in her new novel, but it must be confessed that his understudy, Luke Fitzwilliam, a retired policeman from the Mayang States is singularly lacking in 'little grey matter.' Poirot may have recently become, with advancing years, a trifle staid, but absence makes the heart grow fonder of him." After outlining the basics of the plot and the romantic interests of the main character, Mr Ashley concluded, "He (Luke) is less effective a detective than as a lover, which is not surprising since neither he nor the reader is provided with any clear clues pointing to the fantastically successful murderer. The love interest scarcely compensates for the paucity of detection and the characters verge on caricature; nor is Fitzwilliam able to recapture vividly enough the circumstances of the earlier murders."

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."

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.

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.