The Body in the Library
- 208
- Pages
- about 4 h
- Reading time
- TV film 1984
- On screen
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Our view
“The Body in the Library” is a fair, compact puzzle: every clue is on the page, and the solution still manages to surprise. Agatha Christie keeps a small circle of suspects in play so that the reader’s guess keeps moving, with no romance forced in. At just over two hundred pages, the second Miss Marple novel is a good place to meet her.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Body in the Library is a mystery novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1942 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in May of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence. The novel features her fictional amateur detective Miss Marple.
Reading order · Miss Marple
Full order & progress →- The Murder at the VicarageStart here
7.87.8 / 10 - The Body in the LibraryThis book
7.57.5 / 10 - The Moving Finger
7.57.5 / 10 - A Murder Is Announced
7.87.8 / 10 - They Do It with Mirrors
7.57.5 / 10 - A Pocket Full of Rye
7.77.7 / 10 - 4.50 from Paddington
7.67.6 / 10 - The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side
7.77.7 / 10 - A Caribbean Mystery
7.47.4 / 10 - At Bertram's Hotel
7.37.3 / 10 - Nemesis
7.67.6 / 10 - Sleeping Murder
7.67.6 / 10
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen once.
- TV filmThe Body in the LibraryIMDb
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.5 across 312 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 68% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Classics average of 7.7. That is how 7.5 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.7 | 20 | 6% |
| Hardcover | 7.5 | 292 | 94% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Body in the Library?
It has 208 pages — shorter than 97% of the ranked books in Classics.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Classics — with scores between 7.5 and 7.6, closest to this book.
