The Body in the Library

The Body in the Library is a mystery novel by the English writer Agatha Christie, first published in 1942. It features her amateur detective Miss Marple and begins in the village of St Mary Mead, where the first Marple novel was set.

The body of a young woman is found on the hearth rug in the library at Gossington Hall, the house of Colonel Arthur Bantry and his wife Dolly. The dead woman has heavy make-up, platinum-blonde hair and a silver-spangled dress, and nobody in the household knows who she is or how she came to be there. The colonel contacts the police and Dolly telephones her friend Miss Jane Marple.

Colonel Melchett and Inspector Slack take charge of the investigation, and a report of a blonde woman seen nearby sends Melchett to a cottage close by. The case turns out to involve the murders of two teenage girls who look outwardly alike: a dancer of eighteen and a sixteen-year-old Girl Guide who hopes to go on the stage. Christie said afterwards that she had been writing her own variation on a classic theme, and that she wanted the library to be entirely conventional and the body to be as improbable and sensational as she could make it.