doctors, lawyers, retired colonels and antique dealers; suspicions of black magic; and, as optional extra ingredient, a memorably awful press lord. And of course a generous allowance of sharp old spinsters. Shorter than most on detection, perhaps because the detection is, until the end, basically amateur. One of the classics."<ref>{{cite book |last=Barnard |first=Robert |title=A Talent to Deceive – an appreciation of Agatha Christie |edition=Revised |page=199 |publisher=Fontana Books |year=1990 |isbn= 978-0006374749 }}</ref> Publication history 1939, Collins Crime Club (London), 5 June 1939, Hardcover, 256 pp 1939, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), September 1939, Hardcover, 248 pp 1945, Pocket Books, Paperback, 152 pp (Pocket number 319) 1951, Pan Books, Paperback, 250 pp (Pan number 161) 1957, Penguin Books, Paperback, 172 pp 1960, Fontana Books (Imprint of HarperCollins), Paperback, 190 pp 1966, Ulverscroft Large-print Edition, Hardcover, 219 pp The book was first serialised in the US in The Saturday Evening Post in seven parts from 19 November (Volume 211, Number 21) to 31 December 1938 (Volume 211, Number 27) under the title Easy to Kill with illustrations by Henry Raleigh. The UK serialisation was in twenty-three parts in the Daily Express from Tuesday, 10 January, to Friday, 3 February 1939, as Easy to Kill. All the instalments carried an illustration by "Prescott". This version did not contain any chapter divisions. Film, TV, theatrical or radio adaptations 1982 Adapted into a television film in the United States in 1982 with Bill Bixby (Luke), Lesley-Anne Down (Bridget), Olivia de Havilland (Honoria) and Helen Hayes (Lavinia), and later for the stage by Clive Exton in 1993. In this adaptation, Luke is not a retired policeman but a professor from MIT on vacation. 2009 A 2009 adaptation, with the inclusion of Miss Marple (played by Julia McKenzie), was included in the fourth series of Agatha Christie's Marple; it deviated significantly from the novel by removing some of the characters in it, while adding new ones and changing those left in. New subplots were introduced, and the murderer's motive was changed: Miss Marple meets Lavinia Pinkerton on the train, not Luke, and learns from her of her suspicions about the village deaths and her plans to go to Scotland Yard. Pinkerton is killed in a fall down a London station escalator (about which Marple reads in the papers) rather than a hit-and-run, while en route to Scotland Yard. The first two victims - the village's vicar, and