Miss Marple confronts a "murder" that is advertised as a game in the Gazette at Little Paddocks. The lights go out and they see a man with a gun then they hear shots, then they know it is not a game.

Cheap satin and peroxide blondes were a rare sight in St. Mary Mead, at least before film-man Basil Blake bought a cottage and invited down the London crowd. Then a girl in a garish get-up is found strangled in Colonel Bantry's library, and it appears Basil is involved.

Present a collection of twenty stories featuring Miss Jane Marple, an amateur sleuth who bases her solutions to crimes on past experiences and on the belief that human nature is the same everywhere.

Miss Jane Marple's relaxing weeklong stay at London's high-class Bertram Hotel is rudely and dangerously interrupted by the murderous actions of a crime syndicate.

Miss Marple finds herself trying to outwit a killer when she decides to investigate her friend Mrs. McGillicuddy's claim that she saw a woman being strangled through the window of a passing train.

Although Gwenda and Giles Reed are determined to solve a macabre puzzle involving a hauntingly familiar Victorian villa and a terrifying vision of a strangled woman, Miss Jane Marple advises them not to uncover a long unreported murder.

Dolly Bantry, mistress of Gossington Hall, is enjoying a pleasant doze when suddenly her dreams take a strange turn. The housemaid Mary is telling her that there is a body in the library... When she wakes up, she finds that it is true. But who is the strange young blonde dressed in an evening gown who is lying strangled on the library hearth rug? Enter St Mary Mead's resident sleuth, Miss Marple. With her keen eye for the complexities of human nature...

"Rex Fortescue, king of a financial empire, was sipping tea in his "counting house" when he suffered an agonizing and sudden death. On later inspection, the pockets of the deceased were found to contain traces of cereals. Yet, it was the incident in the parlor which confirmed Miss Marple's suspicion that here she was looking at a case of crime by rhyme . . ."--Provided by publisher.