The River

Faced with two false confessions and numerous suspects after a despised civil magistrate is found shot in the local vicarage, Detective Inspector Slack reluctantly accepts help from Miss Marple.

Maud Bailey, a brilliant English academic, is researching the life and work of poet Christabel La Motte. Roland Michell is an American scholar in London to study Randolph Henry Ash, now best-known for a collection of poems dedicated to his wife. When Maud and Roland discover a cache of love letters that appear to be from Ash to La Motte, they follow a trail of clues across England, echoing the journey of the couple over a century earlier.

At the insistence of Ruth Van Rydock, an old schoolfriend who is convinced that there is something wrong, Miss Marple agrees to visit 'Stonygates', the country house of Ruth's sister.

During a murder hunt game at a country house, to which Hercule Poirot is invited as an "expert", a real murder occurs.