Somebody publishes an announcement in the local Chipping-Cleghorn Gazette about a murder taking place at Little Paddocks at 6.30 pm on Friday and everyone is invited. The place belongs to Letitia Blacklock and everybody thinks she’s out of her mind posting such announcements. Nonetheless, everybody in the village comes to her place at a set time. Letitia herself did not publish this announcement and knows nothing about it, but hosts this party anyway. Then the lights go out, the front door opens, and a man with a bright torch shines it at everybody, blinding them, nobody can see his face. Then two shots are fired at Letitia, but miss, and a third shot and a man drops dead. When the police arrive the first version is that it was burglary and a man tangled in his coat and accidentally shot himself. But Letitia’s best friend Dora Bunner claims that somebody wanted to kill Letitia. Miss Marple comes to help and helps to untangle this case. 

It's a very clever mystery, a very clever thing to name characters Letitia (Letty) and Charlotte (Lotty) -

when Dora Bunner called Letty LOtty for the first time in the book, I thought that it was a typo, but as it turns out Bunny knew that it was Charlotte and not Letitia, but because she called them by abbreviations, she easily confused the two.

It was a clever thing to do, indeed! I could not predict the end. Also, the atmosphere is very cosy, as usual. There weren't descriptions of the atmosphere, but there is just something about the way Agatha Christie writes that makes it cosy.