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4:50 From Paddington: A Miss Marple Mystery
4:50 From Paddington: A Miss Marple Mystery
4:50 From Paddington: A Miss Marple Mystery
Audiobook7 hours

4:50 From Paddington: A Miss Marple Mystery

Written by Agatha Christie

Narrated by Joan Hickson

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

In Agatha Christie’s classic mystery 4:50 From Paddington, a woman in one train witnesses a murder occurring in another passing one…and only Miss Marple believes her story.

For an instant the two trains ran side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth McGillicuddy stared helplessly out of her carriage window as a man tightened his grip around a woman's throat. The body crumpled. Then the other train drew away. But who, apart from Mrs. McGillicuddy's friend Jane Marple, would take her story seriously? After all, there are no other witnesses, no suspects, and no case -- for there is no corpse, and no one is missing.

Miss Marple asks her highly efficient and intelligent young friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow to infiltrate the Crackenthorpe family, who seem to be at the heart of the mystery, and help unmask a murderer.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperAudio
Release dateJul 3, 2012
ISBN9780062234193
Author

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.

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Reviews for 4:50 From Paddington

Rating: 4.178294573643411 out of 5 stars
4/5

129 ratings56 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was sooo close to figuring this one out!The mystery takes a little while to get rolling. I had to put it aside a couple of times. It took until about page 70 for the story to pick up.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    What's not to like about Agatha Christie mysteries? I especially like the Miss Marple ones. I like it that one can only guess who is the murderer, because of the last minute facts that are presented to the reader. Of course I always do- and I guessed correctly! (Maybe I'm reading too many Christies?) Like other reviewers on LT, I took a great liking to Lucy Eylesbarrow.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is one of the Miss Marple mysteries and is pure fun! I loved reading these books as a child and have recently rediscovered them after watching the new BBC series of Miss Marple mysteries. They read very quickly and are so much fun. I love reading a mystery that is more about human nature than forensics!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    While traveling by train, Elspeth McGillicuddy witnesses a murder taking place in a train car that's on an adjacent track. She reports it to the porters and train officials as well as the police when she reaches her destination. However, because there were no other witnesses and no body can be found, no one believes her ... except her good friend Miss Marple. I usually read the Hercule Poirot books. Prior to this one, I had only read two other Miss Marple books and didn't enjoy them as much as I enjoy Poirot. However, this one was definitely an exception. I was hooked on this book right from the start. It seemed like Miss Marple was more of a minor character in this story, but it was still a really good story with a good cast of characters and very well written and a great setting. I will definitely be reading more Miss Marple now.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A friend of Miss Marple witnesses a murder on a train next to hers. The intrigue, red herrings and sleuthing swiftly follow.Another good romp from Dame Agatha.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Audiobook performed by Joan Hickson3.5** Originally published in the United States as: [What Mrs McGillicuddy Saw. The story begins when Mrs McGillicuddy witnessed a murder on a passing train. She reports it to the authorities, but as there has been no body found, and no woman reported missing, they dismiss her story as active imagination. But her friend Miss Jane Marple knows that Mrs McGillicuddy did not invent the story, and she is determined to solve the mystery.This is a great cozy mystery, featuring a fine cast of suspects and amateur sleuths. Miss Marple employs the assistance of the very capable Lucy Eyelesbarrow, a young woman who is smart and steadfast. Together, they are a force to be reckoned with. Having deduced that the body must have been thrown from the train in the neighbor of Rutherford Hall, Miss Marple sends her to fill an open position at the Crackenthorpe’s estate. Lucy becomes Miss Marple’s legs, eyes and ears, gaining entrance where Miss Marple cannot, and reporting back on what she’s observed. She also attracts more than one suitor…. but nevermind about that. Joan Hickson - the marvelous actress who played Miss Marple in the television series – is absolutely pitch perfect narrating the audio book. 5 stars for her performance. Brava!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Classic Agatha Christie with a multitude of suspects. Miss Marple's friend Ellspeth McGillicuddy glimpses what she beleives is the murder of a young woman in a passing train. Marple and friend set up to convince the police, find the body and of course solve the murder. The characters are typical Christie and well developed. The plot becomes more intricate as further deaths occur. The main protagonist is an extremely efficient maid for hire, Lucy Eylesbarrow, great character. The solution to the murder is quite interesting and I completely guessed wrong! I do enjoy a Christie novel.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Just finished listening to this one and I still enjoy it!Mrs. McGillicuddy was going to visit her friend in the country when she witnesses a murder in the train next to hers. Trouble is, no one believes her. And when no body is discovered, they all conclude she's one of those batty old ladies with more imagination than sense.All except her friend, Jane Marple. Miss Marple knows her friend has very little imagination and a high regard for the truth. So she sets off to discover a body.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    More fun from the mistress of crime, love the super efficient Lucy Eylesbarrow (what a name!)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Another one in third person, not first person. It could have been even more fun, I think, if it'd been from a character's point of view -- perhaps Lucy's, since I thought she was a fun character, and I rather hope she shows up again in future... Doubtful, but you never know. She was the most interesting part of it, for me, with her cheerfully getting on with things and working hard and doing detective work at the same time. More of her in general would have been nice -- maybe more of her potential romances, too.

    The misdirection was quite well done in this one, since I had no idea who it could be -- I suspected everyone by turns, I think. I knew 'whodunnit' from someone else's review, before I got to the end, so I'm not sure I'd say there were adequate clues to figure it out for yourself, though...
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Huzzah, I guessed the identity of the murderer correctly. I hit on his identity fairly early, when only one of the three murders had been committed. I didn't know anything else. Sadly to say, I couldn't guess the identity of the strangled lady. What propelled this book to 5 stars is the enormous interest I had for the first murder, which was evil in character but also very exciting to read about. Then there's the two basic murders of the brothers. They catch you unawares. They highlight the first murder and the final solution provided by Miss Marple seems to take too long.Miss Jane Marple has the knack of solving cases which baffle Scotland Yard officials. How she does this may be explained, but cannot be taught. That's why we want to read every story of hers. People as old as Marple, who live in the same place and never travel much, don't have anything new to say. The quirky ability to reason sets her apart from other people of her gender, age, and class.She gets help in this case via Lucy Eyelesbarrow - for me an unpronounceable name- who becomes her eyes and her brawn. Miss Marple doesn't have the body, or the opportunity to infiltrate the sprawling household where she expects a body is hidden. I thought all this arrangement was clumsy but necessary. Anyway I was soon engrossed in the intrigue. The author has the guts to prolong the suspense regarding the identity of the first body. The fact that she does this with ease while obscuring from the stage the presence of Miss Marple and instead concentrating on Lucy and Inspector Craddock, betrays her confidence in her writing.Now, I'm wondering that this fragile, flickering, growing habit of mine to guess Agatha Christie's puzzlers can be strengthened. One trick is to eliminate most of the people who are pointedly probed as suspects. That's how partly I arrived at the correct solution. But another trick is to take a fact provided by the author. A big fact, an important fact that may be true or be a case of misdirection. You then have to decide if this important fact is true or if it's a red herring. Chances are that it will be untrue. If it's untrue then go against the direction to which the author is slyly trying to shoo you. It worked for me for this book. It may work regularly.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    While the train that is taking her to visit her friend Miss Marple slows & stops at a curve.... another train in passing also slows & stops at the same curve... Mrs McGillicuddy looks out and sees a man strangling a woman..... Although she reports it to the porter & train station, no one believes her. Miss Marple believes her and reports it to the police.... but not only is there no report of a missing/murdered woman... one can find a body.

    Her insatiable curiosity aroused, Miss Marple makes discreet inquiries... maps of the train lines, train timetables, what is on that piece of land, etc. Then Miss Marple hires Miss Lucy (a most efficient & sought after) to work at the manor (snoop around the grounds) where the train lines curve.

    Lucy is happily ensconced working for the Crakenthorp family: Luther (patriarch & tightwad); Emma (his devoted daughter); Brian Easterly (son-in-law & widower); sons Harold (bad business deals), Alfred (shady character), & Cedric (laid back artist); and a good-natured grand-son & his school chum Stoddart-West (help Lucy search for clues). The good Doctor has eyes for Emma...

    The murdered woman, soon found by Lucy, is hidden away in an old sarcophagus in the now disused long barn and is believed to be Martine, a French woman who may or may have not been married to the Crackenthorp eldest son (killed in WWII)....

    All along during family gatherings there have been instances of poisonings and now both Alfred & Harold succumb....... While the real Martine (now Stoddart-West) shows up to clear her name......

    Very well thought out plot, good red herrings, a fine (but understated) romance, and strong likable women characters.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is one of the better of the second rank of Christie novels for me, beginning with the dramatic incident of an old lady on a train (not Miss Marple herself, as shown in the film version starring Margaret Rutherford) witnessing a woman being strangled in a train on a parallel track going in the same direction. The initial disappearance of the body is resolved, narrowing the place of its discovery to a remote house inhabited by an extremely cantankerous old man and his largely rather unpleasant offspring. The usual red herrings are present of course, and the final resolution and identification of the murderer only comes in the final few pages, with no previously laid clues that I could see. Published in 1957, this contains some of the attitudes of the time, especially the simultaneously amusing and rather alarming stereotyping by everyone including the police, for example, of bohemian types as being likely murderers, and of the murder of a French woman being much less important than the murder of an English woman. A good and well constructed story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I think this is one of the best of Mrs. Christie’s books. As all of her books, very well written, but the twists and turns of the story are amazing. (The movie made of, “4:50 from Paddington,” with the excellent Joan Hickson as Miss Marple, doesn’t start to do it justice!) Miss Marple is now 90 years old and, although she doesn’t appear much, as always, enchants readers with her subtle yet quite ironic sense of humor. For instance, her statement about Gaugain (*) is absolutely hilarious; it would certainly be frowned upon by the PC crowd had it been written nowadays. (Might contain spoiler.) There is a funny scene where a comment is made about “old maids” (i.e., old, unmarried women), which by today’s PC standards wouldn’t work: Miss Marple would now be Ms. Marple, therefore concealing her marital status! Also, in the last chapter Miss Marple works up with her friend (the Mrs. McGillicuddy of the title) that she should ask to “go upstairs”; I am pretty sure younger audiences would be unaware that that was a polite, Edwardian way of asking to go to the restroom…

    (*) “I myself never really cared for paintings of native women, and although I know he is very much admired, I have never cared for that lurid mustard color. One really feels quite bilious looking at his pictures.”
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Another excellent Miss Marple story beautifully narrated :)
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    There are some interesting aspects of the setting of this novel that place it quite firmly in the mid to late 1950s. The oldest son in the Crackenthorpe family was killed in the war and there is some speculation that he might have had a son who would now be 15 or 16 years old. The house in which most of the action takes place, Rutherford Hall, has seen better days: the grounds are very neglected and there used to be a lot more staff to run it.There are a number of references to Miss Marple being frail and elderly but it doesn't stop her from undertaking quite extraordinary train journeys to establish a timeline for the murder that her friend Elspeth McGillicuddy witnessed. There are also quite a number of references to both Miss Marple and Mrs McGillicuddy carrying out a "duty" in tracking down the facts and culprit in the murder. There's a sense that they have old fashioned values that the younger generation don't share, although we are offered some hope in the "boys" who sleuth the grounds of Rutherford Hall enthusiastically. There's a sense too of the loss that the war caused - the death of the elder son, the poverty that followed the war, the physical/architectural structures damaged and never repaired, the disillusionment, marriages that never took place etc.There's romance in the air too in this novel, a bit unusual for Miss Marple, but there are times when she appears to be playing the matchmaker.I thoroughly enjoyed this read. By comparison with modern day books it is quite short but you'd be wrong if you thought the brevity came at the expense of character development and setting. There are plenty of red herrings - I'd forgotten the solution and it came as a surprise.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Sensible Elspeth McGillicuddy is not given to hallucinations. Or is she? After she boards the Paddington Station train and becomes a witness to an apparent murder, no one believes her but her friend-the indomitable sleuth Miss Jane Marple. Christy holds all the information very close to her chest and does not let go of it until the reveal at the end of the book. I still found the story interesting and enjoyed it very much. Her characters were fascinating and the plot was nicely paced. I look forward to reading more of her novels and recommend this book to those who love mysteries.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Oh the end is so good, I actually never expected that. Clever Miss Marple. Good premise, too. Sadly, I didn't really believe in the family drama, it was too contrived and felt very forced. Besides, Lucy would have been an interesting character if she hadn't been so unrealistic - in class-ridden England, I have trouble believing such a character would exist. I could feel that Christie needed someone to investigate instead of Miss Marple and then had to come up with Lucy when it should have been the other way around. I'm frankly disappointed in the story for the beginning and end were really above the rest.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Mrs Elspeth McGillicuddy er med toget 4.50 fra Paddington og ser en ung kvinde blive kvalt i et forbikørende tog. Men man finder intet lig og derfor er det op til veninden Miss Jane Marple at tage sig af sagen. Hun hyrer Lucy Eylesbarrow til at snuse rundt og denne finder liget i en sarkofag i en lade på familien Crackenthorpes gods Rutherford Hall og tilkalder politiet. Scotland Yard i skikkelse af Inspector Dermot Craddock kommer på sagen og lytter med ærbødighed til Miss Marple.Den gamle Luther Crackenthorpe har arvet godset, men midlerne er båndlagt til næste generation, dvs sønnerne Alfred, Bryan, Cedric og Harold samt søstrene Emma og Edith, hvor Edith er død og manden Bryan arver i hendes sted. Kvinden i toget samt sønnerne Alfred og Harold dør inden morderen bliver afsløret. Det viser sig at være Dr Quimper og kvinden i toget var hans kone Anna Stravinska.som ikke ville skilles fra ham og derfor var i vejen for at han kunne gifte sig med Emma og navnlig med hendes penge.Glimrende krimi
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    After seeing the film version of this story, I enjoyed finally reading the original story. The casting in the film version was great for Lucy, though I got a bit mixed up trying to keep the rich gentleman's sons straight in my head. They seemed different between the book and the TV show, thou I'd have to watch the show again to be sure what was so different as to throw me off. The solution in the book was a bit more complex than in the TV show, and I liked the book's resolution better.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Basis for the movie Murder, She Said, the first of four with Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple. In the book, Miss Marple is very ancient and virtually immobile,operating very much as an eminence grise , until the very end. During the course of the investigation, she describes her method -- relating the various suspects to "types" resident in her beloved home town. The dark secrets and grim destinies of her neighbors are a most reliable guide to diagnosing crime, it seems. English title: What Mrs. McGillicuddy saw!.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the second book that I've read in the Agatha Christie summer reading challenge. In this novel we find that Miss Marple's friend has witnessed a murder on the opposite train when the two trains were crossing paths. She only got a brief glimpse and so she cannot identify the murderer or his victim. From these tenuous beginnings Miss Maple is able to puzzle out the solution to the mystery. She is joined on her quest by Miss Lucy Eyelesbarrow who is a professional domestic servant and amateur sleuth. Lucy is a really fun character and I really enjoyed reading about her. The thing I especially love about these mysteries is the timeless quality to them. While some things in them are old fashioned the murders themselves never are. I think you could take the case in the this story change the names and come up with something that happened recently. I love Miss Marple and look forward to exploring more. For now I am off to investigate another Agatha Christie character, Hercule Poirot. I hope to finish Three Act Tragedy in time for the airing of the Masterpiece Classic movie this Sunday.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Fun story and great reader! I loved the different voices she gave to each character - they made the story come alive!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was my first Marple book, and I must admit I prefer the Poirot ones better so far - Miss Marple was hardly in the novel, and she was constantly 'twinkling' and hinting and generally being extremely coy in a situation where lives are on the line. The mystery itself was fairly good, and I did like Lucy a lot. The plot twist reminded me a great deal of the sequel to The Thin Man film, The Thin Man Returns, with Jimmy Stewart.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Something Happens in a TrainWith an engaging opening and a diverse group of characters, this story runs well. The mystery, I think, isn't the most difficult one to solve, but the solution requires a good dose of Miss Jane Marple's wisdom. The description and the story of the Crackenthorpe family give some insights about the living in England post war (First World War, I guess). An entertaining plot!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Classic Ms. Marple -- what's not to love?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Joan Hickson's narration was a delight to listen to, as any fan of her Miss Marple TV series would expect.I found that, although I remembered who the murderer was, a lot of the details had escaped my memory. I was particularly surprised by the appearance of Martine and the revelation that she was the mother of Alexander's friend!!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I forget about Agatha Christie's books and when I read one I remember why they are still being read today. They are good! This is one of Miss Marple's books. Her friend has seen a murder on a train but no one believes her. It is up to Miss Marple to find the body and the murderer.I enjoyed this book. I tried to figure it out but was wrong on the culprit. I liked how different people were purposed as the culprit, each with a motive. The story moves rapidly. I liked Alexander and the women in the book. The men left much to be desired. The plot was believable. I will be reading more by Agatha Christie.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When Mrs. Elspeth McGillicuddy takes the train from London to Brackhampton, her train briefly runs along another train going in the same direction and witnesses a murder. But when no body is found either on the train or on the tracks, everyone presumes that she must have imagined it. Everyone, of course, but Mrs. McGillicuddy's dear friend, Miss Jane Marple. I really enjoyed this Miss Marple mystery. The character names are fabulous (seriously, Elspeth McGillicuddy is perfection as a name), the mystery is well-crafted, the red herrings expertly placed, and each of the characters fantastically well-drawn. I enjoyed the element of Miss Marple using a younger woman as her eyes and legs on the scene, particularly as Lucy Eyelesbarrow is a lovely character to spend time with. Definitely recommended.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I had my ideas about who I thought "done it", but was genuinely surprised by the outcome!