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Village Mysteries

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Agatha Christie
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Hercule Poirot
2022 (First published: 1926)
The villagers of King’s Abbot are shocked when a wealthy local widow commits suicide and the very next day her fiancé, Roger Ackroyd, is stabbed to death. Dr. James Sheppard, the local physician, discovers the body of his friend and narrates the ensuing hunt for the killer. - One of the most fiendish mysteries with the most dramatic twists in Christie’s extensive oeuvre.
288 Pages
5/5
325
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Agatha Christie
The Murder at the Vicarage
Miss Marple Mystery 1
2016 (First published: 1930)
This classic mystery is set in the quiet village of St. Mary Mead. Reverend Clement's wife, Griselda, stumbles upon Colonel Protheroe's lifeless body, igniting a web of intrigue. As villagers reveal secrets, suspicion points to multiple suspects. Miss Marple steps in to decipher clues and motives, ultimately unraveling the truth behind the murder in Agatha Christie's captivating tale of deception.
247 Pages
4/5
245
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Agatha Christie
The Body in the Library
Miss Marple Mystery 2
2011 (First published: 1942)
The tranquil world of Colonel Bantry is shattered when a young woman's lifeless body is discovered in his library. As suspicion falls on his wife, the Colonel enlists the help of the ingenious Miss Marple to untangle the web of intrigue. With meticulous deduction and sharp insight, Miss Marple navigates through secrets and motives, piecing together the truth in this classic tale of deception, suspense, and intricate mystery.
247 Pages
4/5
205
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Agatha Christie
The Moving Finger
Miss Marple Mystery 3
2011 (First published: 1942)
A sudden outbreak of anonymous hate mail causes only a minor stir in the small town of Lymstock. Then, one of the recipients, Mrs. Symmington, apparently commits suicide. But Miss Marple questions the coroner’s verdict. Soon secrets stop being shameful and start becoming deadly.
240 Pages
4/5
226
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Agatha Christie
A Murder is Announced
Miss Marple Mystery 4
1968 (First published: 1950)
Miss Marple is staying at a spa hotel in a small village for treatment, when a murder is announced in the local newspaper. It shall take place on Friday, 29 October, at Little Paddocks, at 6.30 pm. Miss Marple works with Inspector Craddock of the county police to solve the crime. Deft and ingenious plot fabrication!
197 Pages
3/5
218
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Agatha Christie
They do it with Mirrors
Miss Marple Mystery 5
2011 (First published: 1952)
Miss Marple senses danger when she visits a friend living in Stoneygates, a rehabilitation center for delinquents. Her fears are confirmed when someone shoots at the administrator. Although he is not injured, a mysterious visitor is less fortunate—shot dead simultaneously in another part of the building.
224 Pages
3/5
330
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Agatha Christie
A Pocket Full of Rye
Miss Marple Mystery 6
2011 (First published: 1953)
The bizarre death of a financial tycoon has Miss Marple investigating a very odd case of crime by rhyme. Rex Fortescue, king of a financial empire, was sipping tea in his “counting house” when he suffered an agonizing and sudden death. On later inspection, the pockets of the deceased were found to contain traces of cereals.
256 Pages
4/5
336
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Agatha Christie
4.50 from Paddington
Miss Marple Mystery 7
2022 (First published: 1957)
A woman is murdered on a train. When Miss Marple telephones her friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow and asks her to go undercover to investigate, Lucy quickly accepts the challenge! When a second murder takes place, everyone at Rutherford Hall seems in danger, so Miss Marple sets a trap to catch the murderer.
288 Pages
3/5
178
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Agatha Christie
The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side
Miss Marple Mystery 8
2011 (First published: 1962)
A fatal dose of poison meant for a glamorous movie star fells her ardent admirer instead. One minute, silly Heather Babcock had been babbling on at her movie idol, the glamorous Marina Gregg. The next, Heather suffered a massive seizure, poisoned by a deadly cocktail. But Miss Marple is there to unmask a murderer.
288 Pages
3/5
384
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Agatha Christie
A Caribbean Mystery
Miss Marple Mystery 9
2011 (First published: 1964)
Miss Marple is ensnared in A Caribbean Mystery when a retired military man sparks her curiosity with a photograph and a strange story of a murderer. As Miss Marple sat basking in the Caribbean sunshine, she felt mildly discontented with life. True, the warmth eased her rheumatism, but here in paradise nothing ever happened.
240 Pages
4/5
277
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Agatha Christie
At Bertram's Hotel
Miss Marple Mystery 10
2011 (First published: 1985)
When Miss Marple comes up from the country for a holiday in London, she finds what she’s looking for at Bertram’s Hotel: traditional decor, impeccable service, and an unmistakable atmosphere of danger behind the highly-polished veneer. Yet, not even Miss Marple can foresee the violent chain of events set in motion.
272 Pages
2/5
372
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Agatha Christie
Nemesis
Miss Marple Mystery 11
2022 (First published: 1971)
Miss Marple receives a letter from the solicitors of the recently deceased Jason Rafiel, a millionaire whom she had met during a holiday on which she had encountered a murder, which asks her to look into an unspecified crime; if she succeeds in solving the crime, she will inherit £20,000. Rafiel has left her few clues. 
304 Pages
3/5
287
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Agatha Christie
Sleeping Murder
Miss Marple Mystery 12
2022 (First published: 1976)
Soon after Gwenda moves into her new home, odd things start to happen. Despite her best efforts to modernize the house, she feels an irrational sense of terror every time she climbs the stairs. In fear, Gwenda turns to Miss Marple. Between them, they solve a “perfect” crime committed many years before.
256 Pages
4/5
253
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Elli Gray
The missing Girls
Blake Wilder FBI Mystery - Book 12
2022 (First published: 2022)
Teenage girls from prominent families are going missing and the local Sheriff is at a loss to understand who’s taking them. As Blake and her team start investigating, they find themselves caught up in a power struggle between the town’s locals and a community of indigenous people. But when the girls start turning up dead and the pressure to find the killer starts ramping up, Blake finds herself peeling back the layers of a monstrous series of murders.
252 Pages
4/5
333
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Jo Spain
The Last to Disappear
2022 (First published: 2022)
When young London professional Alex Evans is informed that his sister's body has been pulled from an icy lake in Northern Lapland, he assumes his irresponsible sister accidentally drowned. He travels to the wealthy winter resort where Vicky worked as a tour-guide and meets Agatha Koskinen, the detective in charge. Agatha is a no-nonsense single mother of three who already thinks there's more to Vicky's case than meets the eye.
400 Pages
4/5
366
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Kelley Armstrong
Murder at Haven's Rock
2023 (First published: 2023)
Enter the chilling world of 'Haven’s Rock' in the wild Yukon. Detective Casey Duncan and Sheriff Eric Dalton create a refuge for those escaping the past. But when two workers vanish after breaking the town's only rule—staying out of the forest—Casey and Eric must solve the mystery to save Haven's Rock. As danger escalates, they race against time to uncover the truth and protect the town's fragile peace.
352 Pages
4/5
83
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Louise Penny
Still Life
Inspector Gamache novel - Book 1
2008 (First published: 2005)
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. One of the beloved residents, Miss Jane Neal, art enthusiast and retired school teacher, was shot in the heart with an arrow.
312 Pages
5/5
213
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Louise Penny
A Fatal Grace
Inspector Gamache novel - Book 2
2011 (First published: 2007)
Inspector Gamache investigates after CC de Poitiers, a sadistic socialite, is fatally electrocuted at a Christmas curling competition in the small Québécois town of Three Pines. CC, who had a "spiritual guidance" business based on eliminating emotion, was hated by seemingly everyone, including her husband, lover, and daughter.
320 Pages
3/5
237
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Louise Penny
All the Devils Are Here
Inspector Gamache novel - Book 16
2021 (First published: 2020)
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is in Paris. On their first night the Gamaches have dinner with the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. Walking home together after the meal, they watch in horror as Stephen is knocked down and critically injured. It was no accident, but a deliberate attempt on the elderly man's life.
464 Pages
4/5
214
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Louise Penny
The Madness of Crowds
Inspector Gamache novel - Book 17
2022 (First published: 2021)
While the good residents of the Québec village of Three Pines take advantage of the deep snow to ski and toboggan, to drink hot chocolate in the bistro and share meals together, Chief Inspector Gamache finds his holiday interrupted by a simple request. He's asked to provide security for a visiting Professor of Statistics giving a lecture at the nearby university. But then madness breaks out.
448 Pages
4/5
179
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Louise Penny
A World of Curiosities
Inspector Gamache novel - Book 18
2022 (First published: 2022)
As the villagers prepare for a special celebration at Three Pines, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A man and woman have reappeared in the investigators’ lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they’ve arrived in the village. But to what end? 
400 Pages
5/5
315
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Nancy Atherton
Aunt Dimity's Death
Aunt Dimity Mystery - Book 1
1993 (First published: 1992)
Lori Shepherd thought Aunt Dimity was just a character in a bedtime story. Until the Dickensian law firm of Willis & Willis summons her to a reading of the woman's will. Down-on-her-luck Lori learns she's about to inherit a siazable estate - if she can discover the secret hidden in a treasure trove of letters in Dimity's English country cottage.
256 Pages
3/5
216
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Nancy Atherton
Aunt Dimity and the Duke
Aunt Dimity Mystery - Book 2
1995 (First published: 1994)
Emma Porter is forty, fat, frumpy, and a passionate amateur gardener. When her longtime lover dumps her for a younger woman, Emma escapes setting out on a tour of England's glorious gardens. A Dimity-contrived coincidence brings her to Penford Hall, a sprawling Gothic mansion in Cornwall, where she finds a duke in search of a missing lantern.
304 Pages
3/5
210
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Nancy Atherton
Aunt Dimity's Good Deed
Aunt Dimity Mystery - Book 3
1998 (First published: 1996)
Lori's life has taken on fairy-tale proportions: she's financially set for life and happily married or so she thinks. When Lori's plans for a second honeymoon to England with her workaholic husband fall through, she begrudgingly takes along her father-in-law who promptly disappears, leaving behind a mysterious note. 
288 Pages
3/5
252
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Nancy Atherton
Aunt Dimity Digs In
Aunt Dimity Mystery - Book 4
1999 (First published: 1998)
In a picturesque English cottage where the lovable Lori Shepherd is up to her elbows in pureed carrots and formula bottles, striving to be the perfect mother to twins! Luckily, a beautiful Italian nanny arrives just in time--so Lori can help settle the local civil war stirred up by a visiting archaeologist's excavation.  
288 Pages
3/5
185
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Nancy Atherton
Aunt Dimitiy's Christmas
Aunt Dimity Mystery - Book 5
2000 (First published: 1999)
With rain crashing down on her Range Rover, as it climbs up a steep embankment on the Northumberland moors, Lori Shepherd is beginning to doubt the wisdom of her decision to evaluate a rare book collection at Wyrdhurst Hall. The grim, neo-gothic hall that greets her upon arrival is full of surprises - including a charming, secretive stranger.
224 Pages
3/5
297
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P.D. James
Unnatural Causes
Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries - Book 3
2001 (First published: 1967)
Maurice Seton was a famous mystery writer - but no murder he ever invented was more grisly than his own death. When his corpse is found in a drifting dinghy with both hands chopped off at the wrists, ripples of horror spread among his bizarre circle of intellectual friends. Now it’s up to Inspector Adam Dalgliesh to uncover the shocking truth.
272 Pages
3/5
299
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Total Number of Village Mystery Books: 27 - Number of clicks: 79438

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In this genre of crime fiction the story is usually located in a small (fictional) village or rural town. Typically, these village crime novels contain no profanity, explicit sex or violence. The victims are usually already dead - killed by poison or in a fight. But there may be also (unpremeditated) crimes of passion.
Usually, the main focus of village crime fiction is the social and psychological fabric in a close community. Authors focus on the personalities and backgrounds of their characters. While these are usually kinder and gentler alternatives to modern, action- and brutallity-filled crime thrillers, they are by no means less fascinating. The best village crime novels are masterpieces of psychological puzzles within puzzles.
One notable example of village crime literature is the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, written by Louise Penny. It usually take place in the village of "Three Pines" - set in the Canadian province of Quebec. Another famous series of village crime novels are Agatha Cristie's Miss Marple books - located in the fictional sleepy village of St. Mary Mead. There Ms. Marple acts as a friedly, but rather persistant amateur detective.
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