The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie * * * * *

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie was the January pick for the Read Christie 2026 challenge, and I listened to it as an audiobook. Written in 1942, right in the middle of the Second World War, it is quietly interesting that both major television adaptations relocate the story to the post-war period. I have seen the Agatha Christie's Marple adaptation and loved the bold change it makes, even though it is unmistakably a change. I will not spoil it here, but it works better than one might expect. This has long been one of my favourite Miss Marple adaptations, and the challenge conveniently nudged me into finally reading it, even though this was not a year I originally planned to commit to another Christie challenge.

The novel itself is short and tightly constructed, which means very little was lost in adaptation. In fact, this is one of those rare Christie stories where the screen versions stay remarkably close to the book. Aside from that one substantial alteration in the ITV version, the bones of the story remain intact, and even that change has less impact on the mystery than it initially appears to have.

At the time of publication, Miss Marple was not yet the beloved institution she would later become, and many readers apparently missed Poirot. Reading it now, it is hard to understand that disappointment. This is one of Christie’s strongest Marple novels, not only structurally but thematically. What I particularly enjoyed was how the narrative treats Miss Marple herself. Characters who have worked with her before openly acknowledge her abilities, and even those encountering her for the first time quickly come to recognise her sharpness. She is not underestimated for long, and she does not need to prove herself through theatrics. Her authority feels earned and quietly respected.

Ruby Keene, despite being dead for the entirety of the novel, emerged as the most interesting figure for me. We never meet her directly; instead, we assemble her from the fragments left behind in other people’s accounts. She is eighteen, platinum blonde, raised among entertainers, and working as one herself. She is repeatedly described as not very intelligent, yet she is also credited with a level of calculation and manipulation that sits uneasily alongside that judgement. That contradiction felt familiar to me. It strongly echoes the way Henry VIII’s fifth wife, Katherine Howard, was long portrayed; naive, foolish, yet somehow blamed for adult intentions imposed upon her. Modern scholarship has since reframed Katherine as a victim, and that parallel shaped how I read Ruby.

From the start, Ruby felt like a victim to me long before her murder. Her home life was unstable, her education limited, and her appearance made her an object of attention from men far older than herself. The novel never states this outright, but the implications are there if you look. Even Conway Jefferson, initially kind and seemingly perceptive, ultimately claims he was deceived by her, drawn in because she reminded him of his daughter. In saying this, he reveals that he never truly saw Ruby at all. He saw his own projections, his own needs. In that sense, he is no different from the other men in her life.

Perhaps this reading is influenced by a modern feminist lens, a habit of re-examining classic characters with fresh questions. But it was impossible for me not to think about it while listening. Ruby Keene exists entirely through the stories others tell about her, and those stories say far more about the tellers than about the girl herself.

This is why The Body in the Library remains one of Christie’s most compelling Miss Marple novels. It is not just a clever puzzle, though it is certainly that. It is also a story about perception, projection, and the quiet violence of being misunderstood. Long after the mystery is solved, that is what lingers.