So we’ve discovered what the best Hercule Poirot novel is – not much of a surprise really, although the overall results threw up a few surprises. So the obvious next step is the best Miss Marple novel. Twelve to choose from, so a different format this time. I’ve drawn the twelve books into four groups of three, seeded this time not on date of writing but on that most random of rankings, the Goodreads rating (with a whiff of randomness thrown in). The top two from each pool will go into a knock-out phase. It’ll be obvious as it goes along.
So, without further ado, here’s the first round of voting – just click your favourite from each group. You’ve got until the end of Sunday (ish)…
Group A – as with all tournaments, there’s a Group Of Death and this is probably it.
Group B
Group C
Group D
Enjoy! There might be a few extra bits and bobs along the way – such as the favourite visual incarnation of our sleuthing spinster…
In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel 
My votes are in! Wish we’d done it this way for the Carr chum, way easier 🙂
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Not for me! Although the spreadsheet/seeding/randomisation for picking the groups may have been overdoing it…
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Ah, right – well, it looks easy on the outside 🙂
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Oh, the polls are dead easy to do but I created extra work for myself to make it a bit fairer than the Poirot one.
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I’m not sure that enough people are well enough read in Carr for it to be worth it. I got 85ish votes on each #Poirot round – you could probably half that at least for Carr and most of those will have only read part of the canon, so the skew towards the famous books (well, book) would be even worse
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Oh I agree – in actual fact Christie really is the only one that seems like an ‘easy’ fit for something like this. Everybody else is a bit niece, though it would be fascinating to do Sayers maybe?
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Tough choices – especially when it’s been a while since you read some of the Miss Marples…
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I’ve enjoyed these polls. One for the non-series Christie books* might work, as there are a large number of those and several classics in their own right. I’d venture that those books are are still pretty widely read too.
*you could probably include the Tommy and Tuppence books as well, for simplicity’s sake.
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I’ve been thinking about that but my gut feeling is that they’re not as well read as the Marple/#Poirot books… but I am considering it.
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This one will be much easier for me. I like so few of the Marple books. HA! That Poirot contest had me deliberating over my choices and finally I decided to choose counter-intuitively and voted more often than not for books I felt deserved more recognition. Always rooting for the underdog that’s me. Even a book!
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[…] novels on my blog over the last five years, so I thought I’d hit the last two while I run the Best Miss Marple Novel poll – don’t forget to vote! And I thought I’d tackle The Murder At The Vicarage first as […]
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Sorry I missed the Poirot but I’m in for this. Easy choices this time, but I can see it will get harder. What a great idea, beautifully executed.
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Thanks for the compliment. I was bit worried that this tournament style was a bit silly…
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