Home sick this week with nothing to do, I was in search of a little light reading that wouldn't strain my achey head too much. Agatha Christie turned out to be just the ticket.

Agatha Christie seems to have an affinity for nursery rhymes. The last book of hers that I read, Ten Little Indians, used one to great effect, as did this book. Sing a Song of Sixpence starts off with a pocket full of rye, as does this book. And it goes quickly downhill from there for the characters of both the nursery rhyme and the book.

The king, Rex Fortescue, is found dead in his counting house, i.e. his office. We are quickly surrounded by a whole host of possible assassins, starting with his glamourous secretary and leading to his even more glamourous and much younger wife. Then there is the good son who has something a bit shifty about him, the shifty son who has some quite good qualities, and their wives who seem to fade into the background - or do they?

The wealthy Fortescue family also has a large retinue of servants including a drunk for a butler, a brusque but competent cook, and house manager named Mary Dove whose cool, calm exterior might conceal darker passions. Then there are the rumours about shady business deals, including a mine in Africa called the Blackbird Mine. And what were those blackbirds doing baked into that pie, anyway?

Miss Marple comes along about a third of the way through this novel and adds a bright and cheery air to this sinister novel in which nearly every other character seems quite despicable. She quickly picks up on the possible nursery rhyme connection and works towards solving the case in her soft, "feminine" way, which involves talking to everyone involved in the case and getting them to take her into their confidence, then slowly piecing together the clues she gathers.

The characters in this book seem quite stereotypical in many ways which I suppose is to be expected in a book of only 180 pages that does have so many different characters in it. Still, I would have preferred to really feel I had gotten to know one or two characters rather than having had a whole lot of them paraded past me so quickly I could barely keep their names straight.

Still, I did enjoy this book and I have to admit that I didn't guess who did it even up until the very end, but then I very rarely do as I seem to be quite often taken by surprise at the end of murder mysteries.

You can buy this book for £4.50 on Amazon or you could just check it out of your local library as you're not likely to read it again once you learn who did it. I do recommend this book as a bit of fun, light reading as it was quite enjoyable although perhaps not Christie's best.