The Moving Finger
- 224
- Pages
- about 4 h
- Reading time
- Series 1985
- On screen
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Our view
In “The Moving Finger”, Agatha Christie builds an enjoyable small-town mystery on an intriguing premise of anonymous letters. She fills the place with well-drawn side characters and threads a quiet romance through the investigation. Readers regularly point out that Miss Marple arrives only late, with most of the detecting left to Jerry Burton, and some find the solution fairly easy to guess.
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 Moving Finger is a mystery novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the USA by Dodd, Mead and Company in July 1942 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in June 1943. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence.
Reading order · Miss Marple
Full order & progress →- The Murder at the VicarageStart here
7.87.8 / 10 - The Body in the Library
7.57.5 / 10 - The Moving FingerThis book
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.
- SeriesMiss Marple: The Moving FingerIMDb
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.4 across 157 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 52% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Crime & mystery average of 7.6. That is how 7.5 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.5 | 11 | 7% |
| Hardcover | 7.3 | 146 | 93% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Moving Finger?
It has 224 pages — shorter than 95% of the ranked books in Crime & mystery.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Crime & mystery — and a score of 7.5, the closest to this book.
