The Doom Box

There is good reason for this. Marple does not need to react to the deaths since they are not real, but instead part of a murder mystery plot. The narrative of each film merely reinscribes the text of a book that is always already present. To be clear, I am not referring to an Agatha Christie novel that may have spawned a filmic adaptation. (In any case this would be insufficient since Murder Ahoy had no such antecedent.) Instead, I am referring to the imaginary mystery book that anchors each narrative.

Marple is familiar with the plot of a specific whodunnit and uses this to determine the "real" killer's modus operandi. One would think that this should give her an advantage in solving the case. But in fact, though she knows the recipe, she is never any closer to a solution. More people must die first, inevitably. In this way the vertiginous space opened up by the narrative within a narrative claims its victims.

A Doom Box indeed, opened by the Pandora Marple.

 

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