Nemesis (Miss Marple, #12)
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Nemesis (Miss Marple #12)

3.83 of 5 stars 3.83  ·  rating details  ·  10,552 ratings  ·  330 reviews
Miss Jane Marple gets a bequest from the late Mr Rafiel if she again acts 'Nemesis', justice as in A Caribbean Mystery shared ~15 months ago. On a Famous Houses and Gardens Tour, a stone rolls over Miss Temple, whose student Verity died before marrying Michael Rafiel, over "Love". Fear overlays detour with sisters Clotilde, widow Lavinia and scatty Anthea.
Paperback, 224 pages
Published May 1st 2000 by Signet (first published 1971)
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Henry Avila
Miss Jane Marple the lovable old amateur crime fighter , murders only please, is back in action again.Reading the obituaries in the newspapers. Something the ancient can't stop from doing.All their friends and the people they know, are dropping like flies. Miss Jane discovers that Mr. Rafiel, who worked with her in a previous case has passed away.He was a rich retired army major and a wizard at finances.She had met him on a Caribbean vacation in a hotel, the West Indies, about a year and a half...more
Laurel Young
In which I mostly skirt around my incredibly long and ever-expanding views on societal victim-shaming because who has days to type that up and people just want to know about the wacky British people, for godssake

Nemesis starts very intriguingly, with Mr. Rafiel, introduced in A Caribbean Mystery leaving Miss Marple in his will twenty-thousand pounds, given she solve a mystery for him. Old hat for Miss Marple, right? Except she won't be told the who, the what, the where, or the when of the crime,...more
"This is quite high on my list of Christie mysteries. I've always thought it had a highly evocative murder victim and unusual and passionate reason behind the murder.Considering it is late Christie, this is among her best of her final years.

Miss Marple is called from beyond the grave by an acquaintance, Jason Rafiel, to solve a crime. Typical of this period, Jane doesn't know who was murdered, where, how, or any other pertinant details. In accordance with a will (where she will inherit 20,000 po...more
Lindley Walter-smith
This is definitely later Christie - rambling, slow-moving, somewhat dreamlike (or nightmarelike), with lots of discursive conversations and relying on psychology and possibilities rather than clues. YMMV on whether you prefer this to the exquisitely constructed puzzles of her early books.

There are a couple of points that make me uncomfortable enough to deduct a star. One is the trivialising of rape - it's hard to cope with a character who is supposed to be sympathetic because he's done nothing r...more
Arya Nasoetion
Sep 21, 2007 Arya Nasoetion rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone who can stand reading about a granny solving a case
It's okay, I guess. If only Ms. Marple was a young and beautiful sleuth, and not an old woman...
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) penned her goodbye to Miss Jane Marple in 1971. And what a legacy she was to leave her most popular elderly detective. Miss Marple would be the agent of righteous punishment upon her last adversary whose hypocracy warranted a downfall.

It was Miss Marple's friend, Mr. Jason Rafiel, whose sense of justice had aligned with Jane's detective skills to solve a murder while they were on a holiday in the Caribbean just last year. Sadly, a post card announces Jason's death and...more
Erin (Paperback Stash)
I find it ironic and amusing how clearly Agatha Christie loved writing about her proper, Matronly sleuth Miss Marple, while making her slightly prejudiced against foreigners, while her other main, Poirot, was such a foreigner he basically embodied everything it means to be one.

p 65: "Miss Marple had never succeeded in abandoning her Victorian view of foreigners. One never KNEW with foreigners.""

I've read a handful of Miss Marple stories, but generally find most of them to be lackluster compare...more
Roz Ito
This is the sequel to A Carribean Mystery. It takes a while for the action of this book to get going, because the premise is that Jane Marple must first discover the details of the crime she is supposed to investigate, before she actually gets down to investigating it. During the first half of the novel, the mystery itself is the biggest mystery; once the mystery is known, the plot unfolds fairly swiftly.

It's an interesting device--having Miss Marple stumble about for more than 100 pages in sear...more
Mrs. Marple's last case has her following a bread crumb trail of clues, trying to discover if a convicted murderer actually did it or if he is an innocent man being punished for a crime he didn't commit.
A diverse group of people on a tour of English gardens, a creepy old house and several deaths all make for a good, solid mystery novel.
We also get to see past the harmless, fluffy old lady and realize, Mrs. Marple is in fact one of the biggest badasses in detective fiction.
From BBC Radio 4:
A dead acquaintance sends the spinster sleuth on the ultimate mystery tour.

Badarudheen Kunnathodi
Jun 05, 2011 Badarudheen Kunnathodi rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Agatha Christie Fans, Detective Fiction Fans
Agatha Christie's Nemesis in which Miss Marple is the protagonist, also happened to be one of my first Miss Marple book that I completely read. It's not that exciting and enjoyable as Hercule Poirot books. But, nevertheless, it has its own style and I should say I didn't feel bored while reading this book. Since, it's an Agatha Christie book I didn't expect any bloodcurdling action, only a good suspense and a case that solved using just the 'grey-cells'.

It's quite expected in any Agatha Christie...more

Agatha Christie wrote this, I think I read somewhere, at the age of eighty one. Miss Marple in the story is that age too, and to a greater extent than in earlier Miss Marple stories, I felt strongly that this shrewd old lady was Agatha Christie's alter ego. Miss Marple /Mrs Christie are much preoccupied with the aches and pains and the growing weakness of age as well as he forgetfulness which steals up on many persons with the years, the senility which is the lot of many who live well beyond the...more
Geert Daelemans
The final Miss Marple case

It has been years since Miss Marple heard anything from the very rich Jason Rafiel, who had pooled his wits with hers in that murder business some years back (see A Caribbean Mystery). Now that he has died, Miss Marple receives an unexpected letter from Mr. Rafiel's solicitors, asking her to call at their offices. The late Mr. Rafiel wants Miss Marple to solve a crime, but he doesn't give any clues as to when it happened, where, or to whom. Miss Marple takes on the chal...more
My five stars come with reservations. This is a bang-up mystery where Miss Marple takes on Capital-E Evil at the behest of a recently deceased acquaintance - the Mr. Rafiel who was her partner in A Caribbean Mystery. Twisty and turny and psychological and creepy, for sure. My reservations are about Christie's stance on social issues in this book: the repeated stress on the idea that because there's "now" less stigma for reporting rape, girls' mothers pressure them to claim rape after having sex...more
I love Miss Marple. I like the character of Rafiel (from A Carribbean Mystery) and it was interesting to see him come back posthumously. However, this book claims outright that (1) lesbian love is "immature" in comparison with heterosexual relationships; (2) women/girls often falsely claim they are raped when they have been licentious instead;; (3) I can't even remember. Do I need to say more than the first two? Pretty revolting stuff. That said, the image of Miss Marple personifying Nemesis whi...more
A delightful mystery set in the English countryside. I love the idea of this tiny, unassuming, aged woman seeing the truth where others cannot. I like Miss Marple :)
I can always count on Agatha Christie to soothe my restless soul. Poirot has overshadowed Ms Marple as my favourite throughout the years but she does have her good qualities. 'Nemesis' was rather slow-paced and too descriptive but it still managed to calm me down and keep me interested.

Oh, how I love Dame Agatha - she writes crime stories for the soul. For nothing feels as comforting as an old cottage somewhere in the stunning English countryside, a cup of tea in front of the fireplace and a co...more
This book is a "companion" novel to A Caribbean Mystery, an earlier book in the Miss Marple series. I do recommend that you read that first for a better understanding of this book.

At the start of this books, the premise seemed very interesting. The whole set up, although strange, was intriguing. However as the book wore on, I liked it less and again I guessed the culprit and the big twist about the murder. I think I have just read too many Miss Marple books in a short time as I am starting to u...more
Diane ~Firefly~
It's been a bit since I read a Miss Marple mystery and I forgot how wordy and descriptive they can be. Poirot has always been my favorite Christie detective. Interesting plot with Miss Marple being sent to solve an unknown mystery by a dead man. I did figure out who did it about halfway through.
Fiona Caldarevic
Maybe I've read too many Agatha Christies, or maybe this one was just too predictable. I worked out who dunnit shortly after being introduced to that character. Still, a good story, and I liked the concept of Miss Marple going off to solve a mystery that she knew nothing about.
Miss Marple has encountered the hardest mystery of her detective career i guess. She had to identify the crime, identify the injustice and also criminal of course.
This was a very good read, although it made us to identify a set of guilty people but not the actual one.
By the 1970s when Christie wrote her last three books (Nemesis, Elephants Can Remember, Postern of Fate) it seems extremely likely that she was suffering from Alzheimer's. At the very least, she was obsessively preoccupied with the subject of memory loss. Let's look at the first chapter of Nemesis.

Mr Rafiel and his masseur-attendant Jackson ... (12 lines later) ... He had with him a valet attendant, a qualified masseur ... (7 lines later) ... Miss Marple wondered whether Jackson? Johnson? had st...more
قررت أن أكتب مراجعة على كل كتاب أقرأه -بإذن الله- و بما أني بدأت هذه السنة بأجاثا كريستي فلا يسعني القول إلا أنها مُدهشة، حقًا.
Miss Marple est-elle l'incarnation de Némésis, la déesse grecque de la vengeance et de la justice ?

Cet étrange, ce passionant roman d'Agatha Christie n'est pas tout à fait comme les autres.

Son héroïne a vieilli, mais sa longue expérience de la vie lui permet, en partant de zéro, de résoudre un problème qui paraît insoluble.


Ça démarre lentement, puisqu'on lit la moitié du roman sans véritablement connaître la nature du mystère à élucider. Serait-ce Mr Rafiel qui aurait-été assassiné ? Non, c'e...more
This Miss Marple mystery was written in 1971 and it's obvious due to the language that it's not one of the older novels. Miss Marple reads of the death of a rich man she had met while on vacation (see A Caribbean Mystery). His solicitor sends her a letter from Mr. Rafiel (the deceased man) asking her to solve a mystery, but not explaining what the mystery is. She then receives an invitation to take a coach tour around famous British homes and gardens, which Mr. R has paid for her. While on the t...more
This is one of the Christie mysteries I did not hand off to my kid to read. It's a bit disturbing, as rape and other sexual issues come to factor in the plot of the story. There's a dated and unfortunate underlying theme about treatment of women which I just didn't want my daughter unconsciously absorbing or consciously grappling with at such a young age. She's already encountering our culture's many useless and confusing messages about the value of a woman.
The book is one of Christie's later on...more
What a clever old rascal Mr. Rafiel was! Imagine him remembering her in his will – of course, their time at that Caribbean resort was rather, well, intense, but it still is generous of the man.

But the legacy isn’t without its requirements. Mr. Rafiel’s bestowment depends upon Miss Marple’s willingness to participate in a touch of detection. There is a particular case in which Mr. Rafiel feels that justice was not achieved – his desire is that Miss Marple play the part of Nemesis and reinvestigat...more
Lori McD
Even though I thought I'd read every Agatha Christie book that existed, I discovered that I had never read "Nemesis".

While I enjoyed the book, I found it quite dark and... something. If I had Miss Marple's sense of evil, I'd say that the book definitely has the sense of evil about it - it's almost oppressive. Perhaps because Miss Marple is feeling old. She thinks and acts elderly, and much of the book is her thought process, all of it.

The first few pages were painful. I confess to almost not re...more
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“I really cannot understand the point of what you're saying. Really,' said Clotilde, looking at her. 'What a very extraordinary person you are. What sort of a woman are you? Why are you talking like this? Who are you?'

Miss Marple pulled down the mass of pink wool that encircled her head, a pink wool scarf of the same kind that she had once worn in the West Indies.

'One of my names,' she said, 'is Nemesis.'

'Nemesis? And what does that mean?'

'I think you know,' said Miss Marple. 'You are a very well educated woman. Nemesis is long delayed sometimes, but it comes in the end.”
“Any coincidencce is worth noticing. You can throw it away later if it is only a coincidence.” 6 likes
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