Rating: 
Summary: Another of Dame Agatha's Twisted Nursery Rhymes
Review: Christie wrote several books with nursery rhymes themes, HICKORY DICKORY DEATH being another. She also dealt with dysfunctional families several times, HERCULE POIROT'S CHRISTMAS and 4:50 FROM PADDINGTON were two. In this work she combined the two ideas.Rex Fortescue was a very rich and quite unpleasant man. He ran his family and his business with an iron fist. One morning his very efficient secretary took in his morning tea and found him dying. While investigating his death the police were met with one puzzle after another, what killed Mr. Fortescue?, how was it administered? and why did he have a pocket full of rye grain? As they were beginning to get some answers another murder occurred and then yet another each bringing more confusion to the scene. Jane Marple arrives to the house and begins to sort through the tangle of clues to steer the police in the right direction. This story may seem quite familiar. The Fortescue family is Christie's standard - domineering, wealthy father who keeps most of his family trapped in the family home, under his control. An errant "black sheep" child returns just as the murders begin and there are many family secrets. Although the story is somewhat formulistic it is still a well told tale and a fairly laid out puzzle. All the clues are there for the reader to use to try to solve the mystery before the last chapter. The only drawbacks for Miss Marple fans are that Miss Marple doesn't arrive nearly half way through the book and that it is not set in St. Mary Mead.
Rating:
Summary: AWESOME!!!
Review: I HAD TO READ THIS BOOK FOR SUMMER READING AND I LOVED IT. IT WAS MY FIRST CHRISTIE NOVEL. IT WAS FULL OF SO MANY TWISTS AND TURNS. MISS MARPLE AND INSPECTOR NEELE ARE GREAT! I HOPE TO READ MORE OF AGATHA CHRISTIE NOVELS IN THE FUTURE. MAKE A POCKET FULL OF RYE AT THE TOP OF YOUR BOOKS-TO-READ LIST!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but not Christie at her best.
Review: I have to agree with a previous reviewer in that this would not be the title I would readily recommend to a new Christie fan. I felt the mystery lacked sufficient character development to make the end plausible enough. Watch out for those Red Herrings...
Rating:
Summary: One of Agatha Christie's best!!!!!!
Review: I usually love Hercule Poirot books more than Ms. Marple, but I decided to read this book anyway. I found myself engrossed in the book. There are the perfect amount of twists and turns to keep you interested and guessing. The end was amazing! I never would have guessed who the murderer was if I hadn't finished the book. I absolutely recommend this book if you enjoy reading Agatha Christie's novels. You won't find much better!
Rating:
Summary: The Best of Miss Marple
Review: In my opinion this is the best of the novels with Miss Marple.It has a great setting,and a wonderful handfull of characters.The Ending is pure genious.Read this if you are looking for an excellent Miss Marple Novel.A Classic.
Rating:
Summary: A Thoroughly Compelling Whodunit
Review: Once again, "The Queen of Crime" pleased me with another thrilling mystery. Even more delightful, this book follows a similar pattern to "Three Blind Mice and Other Stories" and "Hickory Dickory Dock." When Agatha Christie sets out to write a story with a nursery rhyme pattern it is truly suspenseful and intriguing.
This installmen in Christie's large collection has Miss Marple, my favorite of her detectives, trying to solve the mystery of the poisoning of financier Rex Fortescue with taxeine. This case hits close to home for Miss Marple since Gladys Martin, a domestic maid whom she had trained for service becomes a victim of the killer. The culprit is following a bizarre pattern of using the "Sing a Song of Sixpence" nursery rhyme, and thus three victims are discovered. Rex Fortescue is discovered upon death to have a coat pocket full of rye grain, his young wife, Adelle Fortescue is discovered dead over a meal of scones and honey, and Gladys is discovered strangled with a clothespin on her nose, (A cruel imitation of "The little blackbird who nipped off the maids nose.") Miss Marple uses the nursery rhyme to discover the guilty person, and the motive is both enraging and poignant. Since there is a lemited amount of suspects, Christie superbly develops the characters and purposefully misleads the reader with plenty of red herrings.
The characters in this particular installment are not as likable as in previous books of the series, but they each have complex personalities. Perhaps my favorite character is Jennifer Fortescue, whom I can relate too in a way. Of course, Miss Marple is unforgettable, and I cannot help but wish that Christie would have put more of her in to the book. Inspector Neal is fine, but Craddock is my personal favorite police officer in Christie's Miss Marple series. However, this book is terrific, and should be read by all mystery fans as a cozy whodunit that is both poignant and mostly fun. Happy reading to you all.
Rating:
Summary: "Children are cruel, cruel little things..."
Review: Or so did Ms Marple say to one of her characters in the book, if I remember it rightly. This book stands out for me through the brilliant, albeit grisly, usage of the old nursery rhyme "Four & Twenty Blackbirds". The first chapter described the death of Rex Fortescue in great detail, although those details curtail none of the man's suffering but his assistants worries: whether their boss is having a sudden attack of epilepsy, drunk, or simply dying. I find this chapter very funny - I have a very strange sense of humour, so sue me - and sets the motion for the proceeding chapters when more of the rhyme came into fulfilment: the dead queen in the parlour, the maid with a clothespin on her nose to make up for the 'bird came and nipped her nose' and even the pie that contained dead blackbirds, which of course, accounts for the first part of the rhyme. Ms Marple commented these things in the book as horribly childish, and she set out to seek the murderer who not only killed from afar but also killed merely out of covering his/her own sad behind. Another brilliant novel from the Dame.
Rating:
Summary: "Children are cruel, cruel little things..."
Review: Or so did Ms Marple say to one of her characters in the book, if I remember it rightly. This book stands out for me through the brilliant, albeit grisly, usage of the old nursery rhyme "Four & Twenty Blackbirds". The first chapter described the death of Rex Fortescue in great detail, although those details curtail none of the man's suffering but his assistants worries: whether their boss is having a sudden attack of epilepsy, drunk, or simply dying. I find this chapter very funny - I have a very strange sense of humour, so sue me - and sets the motion for the proceeding chapters when more of the rhyme came into fulfilment: the dead queen in the parlour, the maid with a clothespin on her nose to make up for the 'bird came and nipped her nose' and even the pie that contained dead blackbirds, which of course, accounts for the first part of the rhyme. Ms Marple commented these things in the book as horribly childish, and she set out to seek the murderer who not only killed from afar but also killed merely out of covering his/her own sad behind. Another brilliant novel from the Dame.
Rating: 
Summary: A nice afternoon's outing
Review: The hard thing about reading a Christie for something other than the first time is that you can't tell whether you worked it out before the end through extra cleverness (the preference), or simply though an unknown working of memory (sadly, the probably truth). Nevertheless, let the record show that i did, on this occassion at least, outthink the Queen, and come to the solution chapters before she revealed it. The characters are a good mixture, not all of them likeable ~ Percival, in fact, is quite obnoxious; i would have been happy to see him cast as murderer ~ and several with secondary motivations that are revealed at the right time. The lead policemant, Inspector Neele, is one of the more attractive creations Chirstie has made ~ much better than Dermott Craddock, for example ~ though, naturally, subservient to and not fully understanding the value of Miss Marple. Another nice touch in "Rye" is that Miss Marple doesn't appear until well into the story; nor is too much made of her, as we see far more of Neele than we do her. All in all, if not the most difficult puzzle Christie's ever set, a satisfying book for an afternoon's reading.
Rating:
Summary: A Pocket Full of Rye is Great!
Review: This is a great book.I like the conversations.There are too many of those,but the book is great!
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