of probing, but it is the shrewd reasoning – intuition perhaps – of Jane Marple that finds the missing link and discloses a diabolical plot." Robert Barnard had a positive view of this novel, writing in 1990. He calls the plot situation classic rather than cliché. It was a "bravura performance on a classic situation." The shift of locations of action, from Miss Marple's village to a seaside resort hotel, were good for the story, "St Mary Mead regulars figure in the case, pleasantly diversified by fashionable seaside hotel guests and the film crowd." The question he raised involves the likelihood of the crimes and the manner of solving them, which he found better than a mystery written over 30 years later by another author, saying that "If you think what happens to the body after death is unlikely, try the more 'realistic' P.D. James' An Unsuitable Job for a Woman." Allusions In Chapter 8 the author gives herself a mention from the mouth of the young boy, Peter Carmody. Explaining that he enjoys reading detective stories, Peter says that he has the autographs of Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, John Dickson Carr and H. C. Bailey. In Chapter 9 Colonel Melchett states that "there's still one thing to be done. Cherchez l'homme." It is referred to as a joke in the book, and is possibly a reference to Hercule Poirot, Christie's other famous sleuth. However, it is more likely a reference to the popular phrase 'cherchez la femme''', meaning that there is frequently a woman behind a man's behaviour and motives in detective stories; since in this novel the victim was a girl, who was presumed to have a male lover, the phrase was changed jokingly by the detective. While explaining how she concluded who the murderers were and how the widowed Mr Jefferson became so quickly enamoured of a girl while knowing so little of her, Miss Marple mentioned the old story The King and the Beggar-maid as a model for instant emotional reaction. All the other characters in the novel were found to act like someone she knew from life in her village. In Christie's Cards on the Table, published six years earlier, Anne Meredith knows Ariadne Oliver as the writer of a book called The Body in the Library. Film, TV, Radio or theatrical adaptations Television BBC adaptation The 1984 television film The Body in the Library