The Moving Finger

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"The Moving Finger" is also a short story by Stephen King.
"The Moving Finger" is also a collection of short stories written by Edith Wharton

The Moving Finger (published in 1934) is an Agatha Christie mystery novel featuring the elderly detective Miss Marple. It takes its name from Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Jerry and Joanna Burton, disaffected siblings from London society, take a country house in idyllic Lymstock so that Jerry can rest from injuries received in a plane accident. They are just getting to know the town's strange cast of characters when an anonymous letter arrives, rudely accusing the two of living in sin. They quickly discover that these letters have been recently circulating around town, indiscriminate and completely inaccurate. But when a suicide is committed over the content of one of them, things flare up.

Scotland Yard sends someone to investigate, but progress is slow until a townsperson calls up an expert of her own, who turns out to be Miss Marple. During the journey of the book, the Burtons end up not only finding the answers, but themselves.

The book's title, The Moving Finger, plays twice. The first is how the accusatory letters point blame from one town member to another, the second is from the addressing of the letter, which the Scotland Yard agent determines the envelopes were all "typed by someone using one finger" in order to avoid a recognizable 'touch.'

"I find that another one [book] I am really pleased with is The Moving Finger. It is a great test to reread what one has written some seventeen or eighteen years before. One's view changes. Some do not stand the test of time, others do." - Agatha Christie, An Autobiography, 1977.

Adapted for television in 1985 with Joan Hickson in the series Miss Marple. It was re-made in 2006 with Geraldine McEwan as Marple in the TV series Marple.

Agatha Christie
Detectives: Hercule PoirotMiss Marple Tommy and Tuppence Ariadne Oliver Arthur Hastings Superintendent Battle Chief Inspector Japp Parker Pyne
Novels: The Mysterious Affair at StylesThe Secret Adversary Murder on the Links The Man in the Brown Suit The Secret of Chimneys The Murder of Roger Ackroyd The Big Four The Mystery of the Blue Train The Seven Dials Mystery The Murder at the Vicarage The Sittaford Mystery Peril at End House Lord Edgware Dies Murder on the Orient Express Three Act Tragedy Why Didn't They Ask Evans? Death in the Clouds The A.B.C. Murders Murder in Mesopotamia Cards on the Table Death on the Nile Dumb Witness Appointment with Death And Then There Were None Murder is Easy Hercule Poirot's Christmas Sad Cypress Evil Under the Sun N or M? One, Two, Buckle My Shoe The Body in the Library Five Little Pigs The Moving Finger Towards Zero Sparkling Cyanide Death Comes as the End The Hollow Taken at the Flood Crooked House A Murder is Announced They Came to Baghdad Mrs McGinty's Dead They Do It with Mirrors A Pocket Full of Rye After the Funeral Hickory Dickory Dock Destination Unknown Dead Man's Folly 4.50 From Paddington Ordeal by Innocence Cat Among the Pigeons The Pale Horse The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side The Clocks A Caribbean Mystery At Bertram's Hotel Third Girl Endless Night By the Pricking of My Thumbs Hallowe'en Party Passenger to Frankfurt Nemesis Elephants Can Remember Postern of Fate Curtain Sleeping Murder
As Mary Westmacott: Giant's BreadUnfinished Portrait Absent in the Spring The Rose and the Yew Tree A Daughter's a Daughter The Burden
Short story collections: Poirot InvestigatesPartners in Crime The Mysterious Mr. Quin The Hound of Death The Thirteen Problems Parker Pyne Investigates The Listerdale Mystery Murder in the Mews The Regatta Mystery The Labours of Hercules Poirot's Early Cases The Harlequin Tea Set
Plays: AkhnatonThe Mousetrap Witness for the Prosecution Verdict Rule of Three Fiddlers Three



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